


Schrödinger's Dilemma

by Winterstar



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Electrocution, Hurt/Comfort, Infinity Gems, Kidnapping, M/M, Tesseract, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 05:57:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 43,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8878612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/pseuds/Winterstar
Summary: There’s a choice to be made. The world around him isn’t what he made it, or is it? Tony feels that the world has become a strange place where the twilight shadows play in the full sunlight and he cannot define his place or anyone else’s place. If he cannot touch reality, then what is left? If the reality he’s left with becomes something he cannot stomach, then what does he want with it?or Groundhog Day gone terribly wrong...





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is for thegraytigress....all of my gratitude to her for her selfless efforts to the Marvel fandom. She has been a great friend and a wonderful writer. So thank you so much.
> 
> This story is very experimental and may be a little over the top - but I wanted to write something about this for ages and this presented itself so I decided to go for it. I hope you enjoy it!

It's a Header. 

Even from this distance, Tony can see the signs. The long dirt road toward the town still glistens with mud from the downpours the last few days. April showers and all that shit. It would have to be the first fucking day that Tony climbed out of his hole for a Header to escape the local crazy house. He's really not ready for this shit. He glances back at the shack he calls his house or garage or shed or maybe even shop. It's all the same thing anyhow. Ever since that asshat changed the whole fucking place, this is home sweet home. He shrugs. He likes it here, he does. The towns folk (and that's what they are – folk) are nice to him, keep their business to themselves, and, if they have any idea who the recluse running the local body shop is, they don't make any noise about it. All good for him. The town is only a little ways behind him and the shop. 

The lunatic barreling toward him is considerably closer. The town’s folk call the locals inhabiting the luny bin Headers. He doesn't know why, nor does he care. Just about once a month or so one of them escapes and cause all kinds of havoc. He thinks he should trot right up there to the hills beyond the town where the old compound for the Criminally Insane – called the Tomb - sits and offer his services to up their security measures. He can tell this guy jerking and jittering down the muddy street, all angles and bones is one of the Headers. He frowns and considers going into town to get the local police force. Rumlow’s an ass but he's efficient and he leaves Tony alone. Most of the time. 

The guy headed towards him stumbles and falls. Tony waits and the Header gets back up though his legs wobble like they are wet noodles. Mud covers him. The tell-tale signs of a Header are there; the hospital gown, the lack of pants. Tony giggles. What the hell is his life? 

He bets Howard never thought his boy would end up like this. But then again, Howard never thought much of his boy, did he? Tony isn't bitter, not at all. 

Of course the Header always ends up at Tony's door. Since his little shop lies on the border of the rural town it’s the first place they run to as if Tony is a stop on the Underground Railroad. He smirks. He's not a revolutionary or even a visionary, not anymore. He's lucky he still breathes, especially since the damned government took everything. Every last cent, all his technology, his armor, fucking JARVIS. He's nothing now with no power. He’s not even allowed a damned connection to the internet. It took two damned years before they allowed him electricity again. He'd run. Sure he ran. Ran hard, ran long, ran right into the fact that the strong arms of those against him could embrace and crush those he loves. So he stopped and accepted their terms. Eventually they stopped checking on him as frequently when they figured out he wouldn't fight anymore. When they figured out the great Tony Stark acquiesced to their terms. 

Of course, the fact they have the Tomb right up along the side of the mountain where Tony can see it from his back porch does offer an awful lot of incentive. Damned if he wants to end up confined to the asylum. Once in a while he has to pay his dues. They bring the armor for repair and he does what they want. He fixes it, upgrades it. He's a god damned coward. But shit, he couldn't watch them do anything to hurt Pepper or Rhodes. It still hurt to remember. He will probably never see them again but at least they’re safe. 

He crosses his arms as he watches the dope flop into the mud again. This is just getting ridiculous. Now Tony is even feeling sorry for the guy. What nightmares is he seeing since he keeps looking behind him into the wooded patch that's between the Tomb and the road. No one is out there, no one but the idiot headed Tony’s way. It's like he thinks something is there, some phantom pursuer. As the man trips and falls again, Tony sees that this time there is _something_ in the woods. A shadow. Maybe he's imagining things. He glances up at the sun. It's been days of clouds but now the sky is clear and the wind from the April storms has settled. 

When he looks back at the woods there's nothing there and the Header fumbles to his feet again. This time the man catches sight of him and now Tony's screwed. The man starts calling out to him. Tony ignores it. He's not getting involved he can't get involved. The man closes in on Tony's position out near his porch, along the cobble stone path. It's quaint and sweet and nothing like Tony at all. From where he stands he can see the man clearly now. Broad shoulders, red heated cheeks, messed blonde hair, and blue eyes. He can't get involved. 

He remembers Pepper and he forces himself to turn away. He's done this a dozen times. So many have escaped the Tomb that Tony knows the routine. They camp out on his porch, beg him for help, but Tony pretends they aren't there. He grips the railing, walks up the two steps to the porch when he hears the whine of the engines and the chop of the blades. The helicopter is here. Like all the other times. Tony presses his hand on the door, makes sure not to turn around as he hears the blast of repulsors – technology he invented. Technology he makes possible. He hears the grunt of pain as the man is hit. Slipping into the shop, Tony peers out the tiny window to see the helicopter land as they cart off their prize. He wonders what the poor sap did. What crime he committed? He doesn't really want to know. Not really. It's not his fate. His fate is stuck here. As part of the machine that allows the world to run amok. 

Tony goes to town to get groceries after the incident. It's like every other day. There's nothing new about it. He always keeps to himself, keeps his eyes down. He's more a recluse and the strange character at the end of the one traffic light town than anything else. Half the time he thinks the reason they let him settle here is because the valley is the valley of the void. Getting a damned decent signal here for anything is near to impossible – he’s not allowed to, he knows that and accepts it. He is reckless but not stupid. 

So he goes to the grocery store and buys a few things to keep him well stocked for the coming week. The man across the counter at the cash register glares at him. He’s got a few batteries on the belt. More than a few. Tony’s buying five huge packs. He squirrels things away now. Like tuna fish. Cans of tuna fish. He never knows when he might need them. He suffers through the grumbles from the cashier. After he pays he bundles all of his purchases together in the paper bag and he makes his way across the street to the old fashioned hardware store. As he approaches it, Rumlow – the sheriff appears out of nowhere. He smiles at Tony.

“Up to something, Stark?”

He’s fairly certain that Rumlow is being paid, and paid handsomely, to keep an eye on his movements and to keep him out of trouble. Whatever that means these days. Tony tries to move around Rumlow as he stands with his thumbs tucked into his holster like he’s some kind of freak ass cowboy or something. Rumlow steps over to him and keeps him cornered. Tony lowers his eyes and mutters, “Just in need of some supplies.”

“What’s that, Stark? What did you say?” Rumlow jabs him with his night stick. “You feeling uppity today?”

Stark only shakes his head and says, “No.” He bites his lips and then adds, “Sir. No, sir. Just getting some supplies, sir.”

Rumlow laughs and spittle flies out of his mouth to hit Tony in the face. He only flinches and that causes the sheriff to laugh harder. “You know, this whole town’s watching you. You half assed piece of crud.”

Tony only swallows down his reply and waits. Rumlow always gets bored and he’s predictable as ever as he shoves Tony with his stick and then says, “Don’t creep around like a dickhead. Stay in your shop and maybe I won’t need to come out and fuck with you.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rumlow raises an eyebrow and nods. “That’s better, boy.” He steps to the side and waves Tony to the door of the hardware store. Just as he begins to walk toward the entrance, Rumlow jerks and Tony flinches again. The sheriff guffaws and slaps Tony’s back. “Fucking coward. Get out of here.”

Tony hustles away into the store, passes the old man in the rocker near the entrance. It’s like a Norman Rockwell painting, if Rockwell had been painting in a post-apocalyptic world. He needs to stop being so dramatic; the world didn’t end. The world just stormed over him and settled into a new place that he didn’t agree with – too bad he thought that SHIELD would change things or at least help. After they stole his armor, and he nearly died from the palladium then they stole the rest of his research, his company. Sure he still technically owns it, but he no longer controls it. According to everything he’s been able to find out; he’s a hermit now hiding from the press and his shame. 

He only wishes the world had succumbed to an apocalypse because then maybe his life wouldn’t be at the bottom of the barrel. He only wants the world to go to shit because that’s where his life is. It surprises him that conspiracy theorists were right all along. The world is controlled by men not in the limelight, but in the corners – the dirt and grim just waiting to come out and transform the world. And now, they got his damned suit and the power. Now they are in the daylight. The monsters of the world won.

Walking into the hardware store he sees a few of the locals watching him. They all have eyes for him, constantly. He’s careful what he buys making sure it doesn’t set off any alarm bells. There’s a kid at the register when he pushes his little cart to check out, he nods to the boy. He knows the boy and the kid smiles but keeps any enthusiasm under wraps. No one can be Tony’s friend. The boy starts ringing him up, and shoves the purchases (a small bag of bird seed, Windex, a bucket, and small shovel) into the bag under the counter. He gives the boy the money and thanks him. Then he gathers up his supplies and makes his way out of the store. All of the locals with their long beards and flannel shirts observe. He’s damned sure they will rat him out if he buys anything useful. He salutes to them as he leaves. Whistling he makes his way back to his little shop near the end of the town’s one main road. 

Once he gets there he empties out his bags – there’s no bird seed, there’s no bucket or shovel – there is Windex. His windows need a good cleaning after all. The boy – Tony pays him to change out the purchases and the boy has a knack for switching them without anyone noticing. The stupid idiots that took his fortune didn’t realize that Tony is resourceful and had some accounts under dummy names that he’s still able to access – to a degree. He can’t do too much without letting the wrong sort of people discover his secrets.

Getting to the shop, he unlocks the front door and immediately steps through only to slam it shut again. He fastens the multiple locks. The front of the shop consists only of a small waiting area with a few broken plastic chairs and a nicked up wooden counter. There are a few old signs above the counter. One says no spitting, another is a Chevrolet logo. There’s an old calendar from 1977 on the wall with a woman that’s probably in her eighties now. She’s dressed in a red halter and denim shorts that cover nothing at all. She’s hanging on the hood of a Corvette. He has the calendar on July. He doesn’t know why.

He goes to the back room and settles into his one easy chair that’s set up next to a small work table. There’s a tube television with rabbit ears on the top flickering in the background. Even though the signal is pathetic and he just gets snow all the time, he always has it on. The static and the occasional reception helps to drown out the silence and it also acts as a pretty good barrier to the bugs he knows may be planted around his place. 

He taps a small button that’s wired underneath the table. It will sufficiently blow out any video feed or at least make it impossible to retrieve any data. He opens up the bag and claps his hands together like he’s about to dig into a delicious feast. This is why he can live here. This is what gets him through the day. He pulls out the circuit board first. “Oh lordy, look at that beauty.” He sets it aside and then pulls out the processors. This is too much. And then he smiles as he yanks out a box of chocolates. He knows what this is. Pieces and parts to put together a way to get connected. He doesn’t even bother opening it up. He knows what it is. What he wanted. He owes the kid big time. 

Tucking all of his goodies into small compartments he’s hidden in the walls, Tony smiles. This might be a first. He has the components, finally of a computer. He might be able to figure out a way to get logged onto the internet. He doesn’t need a provider. All he fucking needs is the means. He knows JARVIS was taken from him, but they didn’t know about Friday. She’s still with him. He taps the cuckoo clock that tocks on the wall over the small stone fireplace. He has his ways even in butt fuck nowhere. 

His stomach growls and he twists his mouth in disgust. Remembering the times he would call for take-out hurts, but he’s not pathetic. He can do for himself to ensure that his family of friends stay healthy. He needs to find out if they are all okay. He pads over to the kitchenette area. There’s no oven, but there’s a two burners stove top, a tricked out toaster oven he salvaged from a dumpster, and a microwave that seems to have only one cook time – blow things up. It’s useful when he wants to think about all the shit that went down in DC. He rummages through his one cupboard and pulls out tomato soup, saltine crackers and sets them on the counter. Ha, think about all the people he used to run with and what they would think of Tony Stark now. They are all buffoons, willing participants in a country gone wrong. Well, not all of them willing. He tries not to think of Pepper.

He takes out a can of tuna fish too. With some bread he makes his tuna fish sandwich and pours the tomato soup into a saucepan on the burner stove top. As he’s stirring it he considers the possibilities of getting a cat. He’s been known to feed some of the feral ones around and it would be great if he had another reason to stop by the hardware store to pick up something. Harley could slip him some more parts. He smiles – at least he has Harley in this dump of a town. He fixed up an old dirt bike for the kid – and now the kid does stuff for him. Gets him things. He has no idea how these things come to Harley or what would happen if anyone ever found out that Harley was actually helping him. That wouldn’t do. He shouldn’t call on Harley anymore. He’s probably going to get the kid killed, along with everyone else.

As he removes the pot from the stove top and turns the burner off, a loud noise reverberates through the small shop. He stands there with his hand perched over the saucepan holding the ladle. He waits. Maybe he imagined it. It is not a Header, not another one. Anytime one makes it as far as his porch they come and interrogate him, shake him down, tear apart his place. He curses, because there’s another thump and then a bang against the outer screen door. 

“Shit.”

One of the Headers made it to the porch. How long would it take for the damned Tomb to realize they lost another of their crazies? This is like two in as many days. What the hell is going on in the asylum? He grumbles. His soup is going to be cold. Leaving it, he walks into the small room with his easy chair and work table. He turns on the amber lights and ignores the mess. He has to step over radiators, and carburetors. There are hubcaps and clock parts and lawn mower pieces scattered everywhere. He’s the town junk man and fixer he supposes. The bang on the door sounds again and he frowns. Where the hell are they this time? Usually he doesn’t even get to answer the door before the helicopters descend like locusts from the skies. 

With an inhalation, he shakes his head, clicks all of the locks, and then opens the inner door leaving the outer screen door closed. It’s a Header all right. Tony looks him straight in the eyes and recognizes him from the day before – the same one escaped. Those blue eyes are so familiar and bright, he’d know them anywhere. Which is insane, he doesn’t know this idiot from anyone of the other locals.

“You got the wrong address, go away,” he says and starts to slam the door.

“Please, please,” the man says and there’s blood on his face from a long slash that traverses his temple and down to his cheek. His hospital gown is askew and Tony glimpses a jut of his shoulder – a shoulder with electrical burns scarring it, a shoulder that looks too thin and weak. The man licks chapped lips and says, “I have no place else. Please.”

“Listen, go to town, maybe someone there can help you,” Tony says and he wants to add – because I can’t. There’s no way. Tony isn’t prepared to help a fugitive. He’s barely allowed to be free himself – if you call being in this hellhole freedom. 

“I need you, please, please,” the man says and he claws at the door. 

Tony screws up his mouth and pointedly looks at the man. He hasn’t eaten enough, that’s for sure. His face is sunken and bruised. There are spots on his forehead where it’s obvious someone used electrical leads. Tony drops his line of sight and looks at the man’s legs. Burns, horrible burns up and down his legs. They’re still seeping blood. 

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Tony says and relents. He opens the door and peers outside and around his yard in the twilight of the day. There’s nothing but the soft patter of rain starting again. “Come on, get in.”

The man practically falls into his lap. Tony drags the man in and, although he’s mainly skin and bones, he’s still a large guy. Getting him inside is no easy task. Once he does, Tony goes through his routine to shut down all of the locks and to check them again – just in case. The man just lays on the floor, his one forearm up and his hand limp. He trembles and shivers like he’s freezing or in shock or both. 

“Shit,” Tony says and wonders what the hell he’s gotten himself into now. He goes to the one bedroom in the place which was probably intended to be a storage room because it doesn’t have a closet or a window. He pulls off the quilt that he bought from an old lady in town and brings it over to the man. When Tony tucks it around him, the man wakes up and shivers under his care. “Hey, it’s okay now.”

“Can’t stay. Gotta hide,” the man says.

“In a little bit, I have to get you warmed up,” Tony says and doesn’t understand why it is so important in his head to get the guy comfortable and not jittering all over the place. It occurs to Tony that the man is right – he needs to get him hidden somewhere. It isn’t like there’s a lot of room anywhere. It is just a shop. A shop built decades ago with not a lot of special hidden rooms. For pity’s sake the bedroom doesn’t even have a closet – how the hell is he going to hide this guy. 

He pats the man’s shoulder and his eyes are wide and blue – so blue like the sky but with a fleck or so of green in them. That scares Tony, green. An imperfection. He blinks away his hesitation because that’s just silliness. For some reason, he wants the man to be okay. He needs to treat him. He has wounds all over and then Tony gently pulls down the quilt and the hospital gown that’s still splattered with dried mud from the day before when he’d run. Tony sees welts all over the man’s chest. Welts that are older than a day. It looks like he’s been hit and whipped repeatedly. This isn’t what they’re supposed to do to a patient at the Tomb, even Tony knows that. 

The man watches him with such trust in his eyes, Tony fleetingly wonders if he should tell the man not to be so hopeful. There’s nothing here but the dirt under Tony’s fingernails and the beat of the April wind against the window frames. It rattles and creaks the old shop building and that’s when Tony remembers. 

The storm cellar.

He’s in the middle of nowhere USA, right in the trail of tornado alley. The place has a storm cellar. It’s creepy and old but he thinks there might be a corner he can stow an escapee in. He leans down and says, “There’s not much time. Can you walk?”

The man rumbles low in his throat and closes his eyes like he might just give up and die now. 

“Oh no you don’t.” Tony taps his cheek to revive him. The man squeezes his eyes shut as if he’s trying to pretend Tony doesn’t exist, but he does eventually open his eyes again. “There you go. Can you walk?”

The man goes mute but nods. 

He doesn’t want to do it, but the blanket has to go. So he pulls it off and the man immediately curls in on himself. He balls his whole massive body, his arms crossed over his chest his knees as high as they will go. Tony tosses the blanket to the side on his easy chair and pats the man on the arm. Minute quakes shiver through him. “Hey, man, it’s okay. I just want to get you somewhere safe.”

“There’s nowhere safe. They have me, they have me. And they are going to kill you.”

Tony bites back his lips and brushes his hand through the man’s hair. “You don’t know that. Come on, let me help you up.”

The man swallows and places his face in his hands. It takes him several minutes to find his composure and then he slowly unfolds himself. He’s tall, hitting over six feet easily. Tony spies muscles under the depleted flesh and wonders what he must have looked like and a flash something like a memory but more like a wish tells him the man was broad, beautifully sculpted. His guest gets up into a seated position and needs to wait it out again as his body is racked in pain. Tony puts a hand on his shoulder to steady him again, because for some reason that helps the stranger. 

“You shouldn’t,” he says more to himself than to Tony.

“Hey, hey now, this was my decision.” Somehow that feels like the right thing to say, but he’s not sure. “Now, come on. Why don’t you tell me your name?”

The stranger flinches and looks around the room at the window panes in the door as if he’s expecting something, or someone. Tony decides it might be a good idea to show some trust so he adds, “My name is Tony.”

“You shouldn’t. They know already.” He shivers and glances around the room with the television still spitting out static. He stares at it and frowns. “Nothing works.”

And he’s right – he’s right because the lights shine into the windows and the roar of the helicopters (and it is multiple) scream through the air and there’s the tread of boots on the porch. His guest shakes and grips at Tony. The pounding comes on the door and Tony knows he doesn’t have much time. This isn’t right. This man might be a criminal, fuck he might even be insane, but he doesn’t deserve the burns and the whip marks all over his body. He shouldn’t be tortured. This isn’t how it should be.

The pound comes again and the stranger jumps. 

Tony stands. He doesn’t have a choice. He looks at the man and says, “I’m sorry.”

His guest only nods and Tony touches the locks, starting to open each one of them. As he swings open the door, the man says, “Please remember, please.”

Tony hates the imploring look, the begging in his eyes. So he agrees, though he knows the haunting look will stay with him. He doesn’t really have to promise. “Okay, I will. I’ll remember.”

The man whispers, “Steve.” Just before Tony swings the door open and the men in military style uniforms, dressed like they’ve come for war charge into the room. The point AR15s and tasers at Steve, who only raises his hands and surrenders. A man enters the room. He’s well dressed, not in a uniform but in a three piece suit. He looks at Tony’s guest – he said his name was Steve. Mister Three Piece Suit examines Steve and smiles. It’s not an overly blissful smile but something satisfactory about it.

“You did good this time. Maybe next time, it will be better.”

Tony furrows his brows at the man. What the hell does that mean? 

“Take him, bring him in and get him cleaned up. I want him ready for tomorrow. I don’t want to see this happen again. It’s too damned early.” The men gather around Steve and jerk him to his feet, pulling him up on weak legs to drag him out of the shop. Mister Three Piece looks at Tony. “Sorry this interrupted your night, Mister Stark.”

“Happens often enough, I’m thinking of leaving the porch light on.”

Mister Three Piece laughs with a small shrug of his shoulders. “You do your part, we’ll do ours.”

They leave and Tony watches from the porch as the helicopter lifts. It’s dark and the light from the copters zoom away into the night, headed toward the Tomb in the hills. He stares after it, mesmerized by the glint of the light in the growing dark. He shouldn’t have let the stranger, Steve, in here, because now his shoulders and his back and his – God, his everything – like his skin feels too tight. He mumbles the name over and again, “Steve, Steve, Steve.” It rolls around on his tongue and he’s not sure about it. Who is this person and what the hell did Three Piece mean at all? None of what he said made any sense. When he turns back into his little abode, it feels stranger and off kilter than it ever did before. 

He figures he needs to sweep the place for bugs again. It’s probably teeming with them; that’s the reason they came so quickly. He spends the next two hours doing the check. After he goes back to the kitchenette to find his soup congealed and his tuna fish sandwich smelling up the place. Now, he really needs a cat. He throws it all out and ends up drinking a cup of cold coffee and eating the saltines. He’ll eat better tomorrow. He promises himself. Tugging off his clothes he goes to the bathroom that’s really more of a stall, cleans up (what he wouldn’t do for a damned real shower instead of the bird bath he gets to take in the sink), and then goes to the tiny storage room where he’s got the single bed set up. 

Oh how the mighty have fallen. He turns over and cannot get the look of those blue eyes out of his head. He has to – because there’s no tomorrow and there’s no way he’s going to change anything. There are too many people’s lives on the line. 

The next day he goes through his routine, ends up in the hardware store with Harley packing his bag of supplies. Tony watches idly, and then something catches his eyes. A local paces back and forth, murmuring a chant over and over again. Tony listens to it, because it’s senseless. It sounds like some kind of weird nursery rhyme. He’s singing numbers, but they don’t have any sequence or meaning. Tony ignores him and goes back to Harley. With a wink, he gives the youth his money and says, “Come by and we can look at your bike again.”

“Sure thing, Mister Stark,” Harley says and hands him the packed bags. 

Gripping his purchases he leaves the store and bumps into Rumlow again. The sheriff asks him. “So what’s in the bag, Stark?”

“Just the usual. Windex, bird seed.”

“Windex.”

“I got dirty windows.” He shoves his hand in the bag, finds the Windex and pulls it out. “You wanna help out and clean the windows?”

Rumlow curls his lip in a snarl. “Getting a little feisty Stark?” 

That’s a warning and Tony knows better than to bait the dogs. He forces his smart aleck tendencies to the back. Something shimmers in his memories and he blinks away the pain of loss. He doesn’t want to deal with Rumlow right now (or ever) so the best thing to do is just squash his normal tendencies and get on with it. “No, sir. Not at all.” It galls him to say it, but he just wants to get home.

Rumlow snickers but lets him pass. As Tony hurries down the street, Rumlow yells after him, “Always the same, always the same. You think you can fool us, but you can’t. You can’t.”

Tony peers over his shoulder but doesn’t look Rumlow in the eyes. Well, that just confirms everything he already knows. The damned idiot is working for them. For the government. He hates being a conspiracy theorist, but that’s what’s become of him. Fucking stinks. He clutches the bag to his chest and manages to get to the shop without too many of the locals looking his way. He doesn’t like to make waves and he just wants to be forgotten. Well, not forgotten, but left alone. He needs to be left alone so that his family of friends will be safe.

Pepper, Rhodey, and then his mind clicks and he thinks about Clint and his family. Yeah, he wants them to be safe too. That would be good. It all would be good if he can keep everyone safe. Pepper, Rhodey, Clint. That’s good. He nods. He gets through his door and dumps his bag on counter. The calendar is still from 1977 and it is still on July. He was a kid then, a kid with a bright future and a billionaire dad. What the hell is he now? He scoops up his bags and goes to the back of the shop again. The place is clean of bugs. He knows he swept for them, he just can’t pin it down. 

His head throbs. Stress will do that to him.

It’s been too long, too long that he’s been stuck in this fucking town, with no one to talk to or see. He wants to hear the click of Pepper’s shoes on the marble floors or the pad of her bare feet – either would do. He wants to laugh with Rhodey and call him sweetcheeks and drink some non-alcoholic grape juice or shit. He’d like to challenge Clint to a dart board contest again. It would be fun. Clint is an ass. He always wins. The man is a crack shot. It’s like he was born to it or something. He shivers – he shouldn’t think about his time before. He shouldn’t consider how he misses his people – even Natasha – or Natalie – whatever the hell she calls herself these days. He misses them. He’d like to remember more, but he doesn’t and maybe that’s a good thing.

His stomach grumbles and he thinks about the last time he ate. Did he eat? He’s not even sure anymore. All the days run into one long gray nightmare. He’s got to figure out a way to get out here while at the same time getting his family to safety. The first rule of engagement is to be sure you have a plan and that plan is always dependent on efficient communications. He thinks about those words, and turns them over in his head. Strategy, tactics have never been something he nourishes. He’s a fly by the seat of your pants kind of guy. He needs more strategy in his life; maybe if he planned things out a little more, he’d get a better ending. 

Going to the kitchenette, he shuffles through the one cupboard and manages to find the can of soup and a can of tuna fish. Does he like tuna? He doesn’t even know anymore. He pours the soup into the saucepan and starts making his tuna fish sandwich. Lordy, remember the days when he’d eat caviar and drink wine that was over a thousand dollars a glass. Now he’s drinking cheap coffee that he buys at the local grocery store and eating tuna on fucking white bread. He needs a god damned better toaster. He could get a programmable toaster and maybe then he could take it apart and use the circuit board – he stops. They won’t even let him have a damned time coffee maker, and forget about a Keurig. He frowns. He is so screwed. He presses a hand to his head. He needs something. He should sleep.

As he slathers on the tuna fish a thump on the back porch startles him. He drops the knife. Shit, shit, shit. What the fuck? It better not be a Header again. He’s had enough of that. What the fuck is going on with the god damned Tomb. Why can’t they leave the damned doors locked and the gates closed? Why is he always stuck with this shit? 

The bang and crash terrifies him. Maybe it’s a bear. Are there bears around here? He doesn’t even know. He drops the slice of bread and removes the soup from the burner. Walking to the small living space he listens. A weak and feeble slap to the door and then the screen door opens. Didn’t he lock that? A bloody hand splats against the window, and then he sees the blue eyes and the fear.

Shit.

Something compels him across the room and he goes to open the locks or lock. There’s only one lock. He’s sure he had others. Shit, shit, shit. They’ve been here. They changed everything. There aren’t even screw holes on the old door where the locks used to be fastened to it. The wooden door with its nicks and grim and dirt is still like it always was – or has been. Except the locks are gone. One remaining lock and then the hand hits the window again and Tony has no other choice but to answer it. In that moment something bubbles to the surface of his mind. How the hell is he going to do this? Shouldn’t he just tell this maniac to go away? If he doesn’t, he can’t hide him. At all. The damned bedroom is only a storage room with no closet.

He opens the door anyway and the man before he stumbles into the room and crawls to the one open space on the floor between all the parts and mechanical trash. The man wobbles and then pitches to the floor into a heap, barely panting, gasping for breath. Tony stares at him for a long moment and then just closes the door. What the hell is he thinking? They are going to come and take this guy away. He kneels down by the man and says, “Hey, hey, you need water? Something?” The man is ice cold and his lips are turning blue. “Damn it to hell and back.” 

He rushes to his bed in the storage closet and yanks off the quilt. Without much thought, he throws it over the man and thinks, not again. Not again.

Not again.

He stares at the man. This is the same guy as – 

He thinks and his mind skips and falls back to the other day when he saw this Header flop and fall into the muddy road just after the rains. He hasn’t seen this guy again, has he? No, not at all. He might have seen him try and escape – wouldn’t he? He would have, right? He would remember, wouldn’t he? And his memories glint and shine and there’s nothing to capture or hold onto except for figments of boredom and gray during the last few days, or weeks, or months. Nothing out of the ordinary. This guy would be out of the ordinary.

He bends down and tries to examine the stranger. Something ramps up in his heart, causes it to skip. What’s going on? He pulls down the blanket and looks at the electrical burns, the rings of burns on the man’s forehead, the slice of blood leaking from his face. The chapped lips part and the man’s eyes open.

“Please, please.”

Tony strokes his hair out of his eyes. “I’m here, you’re okay.”

“They’re coming. You have to, you can’t. Please just look at me.”

Tony frowns and shakes his head. What does that even mean? “I’m looking, what do you need? Water? Food?” His guest looks like he may have eaten a few weeks ago. He’s rail thin and his skin looks pock marked and raw. What the hell are they doing at the Tomb? Is this even legal?

The man shakes his head. “No, nothing works. Nothing at all. Tried it. They just come back. They just do it again, and again. I can’t. They want me. They’re coming. I can feel it. They’re here.”

And that’s when Tony feels the vibration of the helicopters before he even hears them. It’s too late and the man at his feet knows it, too. There are tears in his eyes and he screams out with a bloody voice, “No, no. I didn’t get enough time. You don’t ever let me. Please, please. Not this way. Not again.”

Tony feels something wretched in his chest and he holds onto his arc reactor, only to find it isn’t there. What the hell? He tears at his clothes. It was there yesterday, wasn’t it? He touched it. He always touches it like a security blanket or a damned tick. It was there he knows it was there. The smooth metal of the casing – he remembers the glow. Damn it. But then the door’s slamming open and men with AR15s and tasers march into his home. They cover his guest as the man shudders. One of them grabs his hair and screams in his face, “You fuck, you stupid fuck. The same thing again? Again?” He strikes the weakened man with the butt end of his automatic. The man collapses on the floor. There’s blood leaking out of the stranger’s nose and ears. Tony stares at it and his stomach churns. 

That’s when Mister Three Piece Suit walks in and tsks as he sees the prisoner on the floor. “He’s a stupid fuck, isn’t he, Mister Stark?”

Tony only stares at the man and there’s a lingering stench in the air. It smells rotten and decaying. He slaps Tony on the shoulder and says, “You do your part, we’ll do ours until he fucking gets it. Right?”

Tony only nods. Mister Three Piece gestures and his guards/soldiers/torturers cart the stranger away. He peeks open his eyes as they manhandle him out of the small shop and whispers to Tony. “Steve.”

He doesn’t know if the man is introducing himself or if he’s trying to call out to someone. The niggling sense that he might be experiencing déjà vu scares him. As they leave, Tony goes to the door and clicks the one lock in place. He runs his hands along the smooth wood and curses when he can’t find a single thing wrong with the door. He knows there were more locks. He knows he had a fucking arc reactor in his chest. He tears open his shirt and looks down. There’s nothing there. He runs to the tiny bathroom that doesn’t even have a fucking shower and looks in the mirror. The mirror has patches that don’t reflect anymore but he still stares at his chest. It’s perfect. There’s nothing there. But he knows – he did have it. He had the arm- the sui- what? Afghani-. No, no, that’s all wrong. 

He thinks he’s having a psychotic break. He needs to call someone. Bruce. He should call Bruce. Who the hell is Bruce? He needs to – needs to sleep. He falls out of the bathroom and goes to the bed. He collapses into it, and realizes the quilt is halfway across the room. He’s not getting up, he doesn’t even know what the hell is happening. Why is he here? What happened to the iron- iron what? He covers his face with his hands. This place is killing him.

When he wakes in the morning, if he wakes he cannot remember if he slept or not, he fumbles out of the quilt and frowns. He glares at it like it is a snake. The quilt. It’s on the bed. Where it is supposed to be, what the fuck is wrong with him. He doesn’t have another quilt why is he worried about the damned quilt. He leaves the tiny storage room and stares at the floor. The quilt. No, it’s on the bed. There’s nothing on the floor. He kneels down to touch the floor boards. What’s going on? Then he stares at the cuckoo clock. 

“Friday?”

Nothing answers. Why would a cuckoo clock be named Friday? He scratches at his hair. He feels filthy like he hasn’t showered in ages. Maybe he should considering installing the shower into the bathroom. That’s a good idea. He goes to the kitchenette. It’s pristine, clean, and empty. He really needs to go grocery shopping again. His stomach protests. When was the last time he ate? He cannot remember, he’s so hungry. He decides that today will be shopping day. He needs to get his act in gear. He wants to meet the locals, learn what’s going on here, get his business going. He gets dressed and notices as he goes to lock up that his back door doesn’t have any lock on it at all. He frowns. He really needs to fix that. He opens the door when he notices a slight brown smear on the glass in the lower corner. Examining it, he would swear it was the remnants of a bloody finger print. Hmm, he needs some Windex to clean the glass that’s for sure. 

He slips out of the shop around ten in the morning and walks down the one street with a traffic light. It’s a breezy day but sunny. He welcomes that, seems it likes to rain a lot around here. From what he’s seen so far this area of the country takes the idea of April showers seriously. When he gets to the grocery store he fills up his cart with soup and tuna fish and white bread. That’s good, that’s what he likes. Something niggles at the back of his brain and he can’t remember if there was something else. Did he forget to put something on the list?

He finishes up and pays in the grocery store and jogs across the street to get some supplies for his shower project. Seeing Sheriff Rumlow, Tony waves at him and smiles. The Sheriff gives him a jaunty salute and then Tony goes into the hardware store. He spends some time looking over items for the shower, and then picks up some bird seed and, remembering the dirty window, goes to the cleaning supply section. 

Windex. There’s one bottle.

He reaches for it. And stops. He stares at this hand. He recalls a bottle of Windex in his hand before, he held it. He knows he has. He’s being ridiculous, of course he had the bottle of Windex before – this isn’t the first time that Tony’s ever cleaned anything. He lived with his Ma, his sick Ma all those years ago. He staggers back, away from the Windex. Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

His mother, a nurse? Got TB, couldn’t shake it. 

That’s not right. His mother sang to him. In Gaelic. 

No, that’s not right. That’s not right at all. He drops his grocery bag and the cans of soup and tuna fish roll out. He stands there staring at the dozens of cans. Is that all he eats, ever? What the hell? He quakes as if a cold wind hits him. He should clean up this mess, he needs to clean up the cans and, when he leans down to do it, he remembers the saucepan with the soup. Of course, that’s how he cooks it – all the time – every day – every night. He tries to remember how it tastes and he cannot. He only remembers cooking it, preparing it. Another of the cans falls to the floor and he flashes to hearing the thump on his back porch. Christ. Shit.

He’s coming.

Tony abandons the cans of food on the floor in the aisle. He forgets the shower supplies and the bird seed. He makes it to the front of the store and there’s a boy there that calls to him. And Tony only shakes his head. He doesn’t even know what the hell the boy is saying. Instead, Tony races out of the door and hurries back to his house only waving a good bye to Rumlow as he calls to Tony and tells him that they should do poker one day.

“Sure, sure,” Tony says and turns back to his shop, to his hideaway. He needs to figure out what the hell is happening. That’s when he remembers the thump again as he enters the shop front. He rounds the counter and stares at the calendar. July 1977. What the fuck day is it really? What year? He can’t remember.

April showers bring May flowers. It’s April right? No, it can’t be. The leaves are turning gold, or were they? He doesn’t want to open the door shop and see. All he knows is that tonight while he’s preparing his damned soup that there will be thump on his back porch and then – and then the stranger will appear. He’s sure of it. He knows it. As sure as he is that a cuckoo clock is not named Friday. Why the hell? But then he’s standing in his kitchenette and his eyes fall on the pepper shaker. Pepper. 

He reaches for it, picks it up. Pepper. “Pepper.”

Spice? No, not spice something else. He has to figure out what. He needs to know. He scrubs at his hair and tugs it until tears that were already in his eyes shed. Rocking back and forth he finds himself on the floor. Something is wrong. He looks around, clock. What time is it? He rushes to the sitting room, the back room of the shop, and sees that the cuckoo clock is still. It doesn’t even move. Lord, what the fuck happened to him?

Then his eyes catch the quilt in the bedroom. He’s not going to do it this way. Not again. The man – the stranger – the Header is coming here soon. He has to hide him. He needs to hide the man. He tears the blanket off of the bed, and then begins to gather whatever else he can think of. He can’t even think. He yanks the cuckoo clock of the wall and stashes it into a canvas bag. He throws as much into the bag that will fit. He lets instinct take him since nothing else seems to be working. He goes out onto the back porch and looks to the hills, waiting for the man. But no, he can’t wait here, he has to be ready. Really ready. He goes down the steps and quickly goes to the side of the building where there are old machine parts, tires stacked, a broken lawn mower, and a gnarly bush. He fumbles through the mess because he knows there’s a storm cellar. He remembers something about it, thinking about it once. Or something.

Nothing, nothing at all. He has to find it. Where is it? He couldn’t have lost a damned cellar. 

“Hey Mister Stark, whatcha doing?”

“Harley?” Tony squints at him as he hugs the quilt and bag to his chest. 

“Yeah, you looking for something? You might want to come back to the store, I have some really good stuff I found,” Harley says and Tony shakes his head.

“I just need the storm cellar. Where’s the storm cellar?”

Harley tilts his head and looks like he cannot figure out what Tony’s asking. Slowly he comes to himself and says, “It’s over by the back barn.”

“The back barn?” Tony spins on his heels and there it is. A barn. It’s on the small side for a barn, but it is sitting tucked behind the shop. Was that there this morning? He doesn’t know and he’s swimming in doubt with anxiety like sharks chopping at him. He nods and takes off to the barn with Harley trailing behind him.

It’s more like a shed than a barn but he doesn’t care. He needs to find the damned storm cellar before the Header appears on his porch. He circles the place and then the youth says, “Maybe if you ask your cuckoo clock?”

He stops dead and glares at the kid. What the hell kind of answer is that. The boy looks completely sane and he lifts his chin to the canvas bag that Tony has. There’s no indication that there’s a clock in the bag. How did he know? What fucking rabbit hole did he fall down? “Okay.” He pulls out the cuckoo clock and says, “Dearest cuckoo can you tell me where the storm cellar is?”

Harley only laughs. “Its name is Friday.”

He grimaces but decides to play along. What the hell else should he do? He picks up the ancient clock that must be an antique and be worth over a thousand dollars easily. “Friday, where’s the storm cellar?”

The top little door to the clock opens and the bird chirps at him. Then the whole thing chimes and Tony drops it. It lays there in the mud doing nothing. When he looks up again the boy is nowhere to be found. He’s lost it, he really has. These months marooned here have eaten away at what sanity he had left. He shudders and then the little clock makes a bong noise. He laughs and it hurts his throat.

The stranger named Steve never shows up that night.

Waking up in the little storage room Tony rolls over and throws a hand over his face. When did he go to bed? What happened? Everything hurts and he’s hungrier than hell. He must have forgotten to eat again. He shouldn’t tinker so much, but the shop needs him to do the repair work. He’s been running it for ages and ages now. Ever since he moved to the town after – after? He opens his eyes. After what? What happened and why?

He sits up. Shit. This is not going to start all over again. He’s not going to play Bill Murray in some demented version of _Groundhog Day_. He’s going to find out what the hell happened or is happening. Nothing adds up at all. He jumps out of bed, cleans up as much as he can and heads straight to the town. He’s going to find out from someone what the hell is happening here. The grocery store is closed. The hardware store is empty and closed. The only one in town is the sheriff. Rumlow’s always here, rambling around town, acting like a dick. Every day, every day when Tony comes out to buy the tuna fish and the Windex. Because hell you cannot have enough tuna fish and fucking Windex. He rams right up to Rumlow nearly knocking him down and not caring a bit.

“You’re constant. You. Who are you? What’s going on here?”

Rumlow smiles and taps his ear piece. He doesn’t look like a sheriff at all. He looks like one of those guards from the Tomb. “We got another one.”

“Another what?” Tony says and grabs for his arm. 

Rumlow twists away from him, doesn’t release him, but flips him over and onto his back. The cold wet ground seeps into his shirt, freezing him. “You don’t get it do you? You gotta start listening. Just do your damned job.” Rumlow pulls his gun from his holster and pushes it up against Tony’s temple. 

Tony raises his hands from the ground. They are muddy and wet. “What’s my job?”

“Keep occupied. That’s all, that’s all you gotta do,” Rumlow says and smiles. “Simple, you idiot.”

He doesn’t as much see the fist to the face as feel it crush into him and crack open the world into bright lights. Too bright. Everything is too bright and his mouth tastes like someone glued it together and his eyes feel sticky. He tries to open them and he wants to groan but nothing comes out. A flip of nausea grows and churns in his belly but he fights it and closes his eyes again. The lights blinded him, anyhow. But he’s too curious and he feels wrong, off. What happened to the street and the mud? What happened to the April Showers?

He peels his eyes open one more time and it takes too long for him to get used to the blinding light. Tears stream down his face from the pain and his head aches like he has a fever. The chills run through his body and the images around him resolve. There are smudges, figures around him and he thinks they might be people. But who knows, his eyes hurt too much to focus. Then he sees what’s across from him and his consciousness resolves. In a chair, a chair that looks like the cross between a dentist’s chair and a damned electric chair sits the Header, the stranger. He’s got a mouth guard in, and there are electrode taped all over his naked body. The smell of burnt flesh permeates the room. 

Tony tries to muffle his gasp because clearly whatever the hell is going on, he’s part of this – either against his will or not. He wouldn’t do this as part of who he is, would he? He doesn’t believe in torturing people, does he? A brief image of someone standing over him, someone strong, foreboding and powerful taking him by the collar and shoving him into a bucket of cold dirty water. He gulps down the image and blinks away the fear. He doesn’t believe in any kind of torture – at all.

Tony tries to assess the situation. Someone once told him that tactically he needed to evaluate the situation before going headlong like a teenager into battle without thinking it through – he’s no idea who that was. But he looks down at himself. He’s tied to a chair. Not tied. There are shackles that connect him to the arms of the chair and he can feel some around his ankles as well. He’s dressed unlike the man across from him. He can’t move his head much and there’s something around his head like a crown. It feels too tight. It feels a little like his own technology, like Binarily Augmented Retro Framing. But it can’t be that- no it isn’t. It’s something else entirely because he can see wires traveling down the side of his interface to the floor, cross it and then up to attach to the man across from him. And why can’t he remember his name? Why the fuck did they do to him? He wants to protest, but when one of the white clad technicians turns around to look at him, he closes his eyes. Did he see green skin?

Shit.

This can’t be right. He’s dreaming again. He has to wake up. What the hell is wrong with him? Maybe it is a fever? He needs to get back to the shop, he needs to find a way to get a shower installed in that tiny bathroom. Maybe he could somehow build out and connect the back barn with his shop and increase the living space in his home. That would be nice. But that would mean he would have to take down the wall where the cuckoo clock hangs. 

Goodbye Friday.

He laughs. Why the hell is his clock named Friday? Who does that? Who even names a clock? He has to get out of bed and stop this silly dreaming. It’s a fucking weird ass nightmare. He doesn’t believe in alien abductions, why would he dream of them? He flicks his eyes open and he’s still in the room, no the laboratory/prison cell. His vision clears and he sees the man across from him, his head hanging, and his eyes glassy. There’s blood dripping from his mouth even though they have some kind of guard shoved into it pushing his lips open wide. Blood streams out of his nose as well. When the man looks at him there’s only one thought that comes to his mind, one word. And he says it.

“Steve.”

Alarms scream and someone yells that he’s awake. But that makes no sense, he knows he’s sleeping. He’s dreaming of a god damned alien abduction instead of working on his remodel. Someone jabs the man across from him with an electrified prod. Steve screams around the mouth guard, juddering in the chair and his fingers curl up and his nose floods his face with blood. Tony jerks in his chair, trying to get out, trying to make them stop.

“Get him under, we’ll never get it done if he doesn’t go under again.

A second later the whole chair Steve is sitting in rattles to life and he opens his mouth in a soundless scream as the electricity courses through his body. The room dims around Tony and he closes his eyes, against his will. He falls downward into the rain soaked valley again.

When he opens them again he’s not in the room, and he’s not on the street with muddy water soaking into his shirt, he in his bed and he’s staring at the dirty walls. He hears someone scream, he hears his mother singing in Gaelic, and he hears someone coughing again. He closes his eyes and he sees a face and he calls her mother, but she’s not his mother and he knows it. The room around him transforms and he’s tiny, scrawny, sickly. His mother bends over him with a spoonful of medicine and he grimaces but takes it anyhow. She looks pale and rough like the world spent too much time running her ragged but she still tries to be pleasant. She still tries to see the joy and faith in this world. He loves her.

She turns around and says, “Now bring him back, slowly. We need to find out where the connection still exists.”

Tony scrunches up his face trying to figure out what this woman in his dream means. The room narrows and his vision blacks out until he opens his eyes again and he’s back in the little storage room. He hears the wind roar by and he wonders if it will rain again today. It would be nice if it would be a sunny April day. He would really like it to be a warm, sunny day. He’s done with the wet spring. Climbing out of bed, he goes to the bathroom and sighs. Time to get the shower installed. He needs to go to the hardware store and get his supplies. As he cleans up his stomach growls. He’s hungrier than hell, when was the last time he ate?

He decides it might be a good idea to pick up some food along the way. Nothing in his cupboards so off to the grocery store. When he get there he picks up tomato soup, tuna fish, and starts on his way out when he notices blueberries. He picks up a pint and adds them to the cart. He likes blueberries he thinks. But he can’t remember the last time he actually ate them. A big black hole in the sky flashes through his memory and he frowns. Black holes and blueberries. He has to eat more and take better care of himself. He thinks he eats a lot of tuna fish. Maybe it is giving him weird memories or images or hallucinations or something. There’s a boat load of mercury in tuna fish and hell, if mercury didn’t cause hatters to go nuts back in the day. Thus the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland. 

He pays for his groceries and then jogs over to the hardware store intent on looking for shower supplies. When he fills his cart, he stops by the cleaning supply aisle and throws in some Windex, too because you can never have enough Windex. He needs clean windows so he can look out when he’s sick and Ma is singing to him. He jerks and blinks. Shit, he does need to eat more. Who knew that low blood sugar could do this to a person. Going to the check out lane he notices that Harley is gone replaced by a woman with red hair and body suit like she’s going to go diving and kill people along the way. He cringes. What does that mean?

He places all of his items on the conveyer belt and wonders why he ever wanted to always have Harley. Did Harley give him specials? A percentage off? He bites at his lips. He really has low blood sugar – he can’t remember a thing. This woman across the counter keeps staring at him, examining him with her cat eyes. She smiles when their eyes meet and, while it is not unkind, it is probing and he doesn’t like it. 

“What happened to the boy?”

“Boy?”

“Harley? I liked him.” Though for the life of him, Tony cannot figure out why. The boy gave him things. Other things. Things that were not Windex. His hands begin to sweat, and his breath races as his heart hurts his chest. Didn’t his chest ache once? He taps on it again and find nothing there – nothing at all. 

“Harley’s gone. He went away. I can help you,” she says and there’s special emphasis on the last words. “Do you know what you want?”

“Want?” He wants Windex. He curses low in his throat – that’s not right. Shit. He only shakes his head at her.

“I can help you. You need to listen to me,” she says as she continues to ring up his items. “You need to find out what they want him for. You need to find out where they’re keeping you. We don’t have any clue.”

“I’m here, right here in front of you,” Tony says and for some reason he thinks she likes spiders. “Do you like spiders?”

She smiles and winks at him. “Now, you’re getting it. We only got through with a little hacking and a lot of luck. Somehow or another you still have Friday connected. She’s the key. Activate her so we know where to find you.”

“Friday?” Friday is his cuckoo clock. This makes no sense. His clock can’t activate anything. Except for time. They want time, a connection. He knows this down deep in his bones. She turns away from him as he packs the groceries into his bag, grabbing the Windex and cursing at the same time. 

“Just take it.” The voice doesn’t belong to her and he jolts because it sure as hell sounded like a man. When he looks up Harley is there with a big grin. “See you next Saturday, Mister Stark?”

He takes the bags off of the counter and nods, only looking over his shoulder a second time to try and figure out if he’s going insane. There’s something wrong. He should ask about a doctor. He hates the doctor’s. When he gets to the street he spots the sheriff again but this time as he approaches he realizes that Rumlow is no longer the sheriff. When the hell did that happen?

It’s a tall man with a patch over his eye. He glares at Tony and, as he passes, says, “Turn on Friday. Whatever way you can do it, do it.” 

He squeezes his eyes closed and rushes away from the man. Has the whole damned town transformed into other people? He doesn’t look back or up, he keeps his eyes on his shoes and finds his way more by feel than anything else. Once he gets to his little shop, he opens up the door and hears the bell ring. He glances up at the tiny silver bell and then back to the single dirt pitted counter. His eye catches the calendar – July 1977. There’s a date circled on it. He goes to the calendar. His mother was always so angry about the calendar, told his father it wasn’t appropriate to give a seven year old a calendar with scantily clad women draped over cars. But Tony didn’t care, he still loved the cars. The calendar was the first one he ever received and he hastily opened it up and circled the 4th of July and scribbled in his young handwriting – _Cap’s birthday_. 

He touches the date now and smiles as he goes to the back room and starts to put away all of the supplies including his food. He puts the blueberries on the counter and opens them. He pops a few of the round fruits and smiles. A burst of flavor hits his tongue. He scoops a few into his hand and stares at them. Blueberries. 

Big holes in the sky. 

He blinks his eyes a few times and decides he should probably not think about it anymore. He needs to eat. He throws on the soup and gets the tuna out to make a sandwich. He thinks he hates the smell of tuna – why the hell does he even buy it at all? He throws the sandwich down and grimaces at it like it might be a monster, an alien.

A Chitauri.

He shivers. Lord, what is that all about. 

“Tony.”

He jumps and spins around but no one is there at all. “What the hell?”

He cannot understand anything that’s going on today or yesterday. And then it occurs to him he has no recollection of yesterday at all. He remembers nothing. He can’t even remember when he first started living here. And was his father dead of mustard gas or was he alive when Tony was seven? If his father died of mustard gas shouldn’t Tony be much older? 

“What the hell?”

The cuckoo clock. 

He crosses the living space, hopping over machinery and tools as he does. When he gets to the clock, a thump on his back porch startles him. He whips around and waits. He’s there. Tony knows it. If there’s something he recalls, or he remembers at the moment it’s actually happening is this. How can he remember it if it is just happening? Shit. A bloody hand hits the door and Tony hurries to it and opens it. There aren’t any locks at all. Swinging the door open, he catches the bloody and bruised Header as he falls through the entrance. Tony drags him inside and instantly knows.

“Steve.” It’s right, that’s his name.

“T-Ton- you remember?” Steve shudders in his arms and there’s so many burn marks and so much blood that Tony cannot begin to categorize what’s wrong. Steve quakes with shock in his arms and Tony knows, knows, that he should recall everything about this man in his arms. Abruptly an image solidifies in his head of Steve cradled in his arms – but not like this, not injured and dying. But another image – a softer, kinder, pleasant image. One where they embrace in love. Who is this man? Tony doesn’t know but he understands something deep in his heart.

“Yes, I remember you,” Tony says and he cannot stop the tears from falling. Even as Steve trembles in his arms, Tony gasps out a sob. His life – whatever this life is – is a lie. He knows it as much as he knows that somehow, someway this man is his own soul. 

“Cloc-.” Steve tries to say and then the beat of helicopters sluice through the air. 

“No, no, no!” Tony screams. This is not going to start over again. He’s not going to forget again. What the hell should he do? He’s not going to do what they want, every time. What are they trying to do anyhow? He can’t believe a single thing that’s happening. That is the one truth. He lays Steve on the floor and jumps across to the clock. He pulls it off the wall and yells, “Friday?”

Nothing happens. He starts to smash it as the boots march on the back porch and he sees Steve curling in on himself and his ragged breath becomes shallow and weaker. He doesn’t know what to do. 

“What the hell is Friday? What the hell?” He shakes the clock as the door slams open and he’s standing there as the soldiers burst into his shop. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do so he just says what the woman at the store told him to do. “Friday send a signal and tell them where I- no, we.” He amends as he looks at the man on the floor. “Where we are.”

Mister Three Piece Suit walks into the small living room and spots Tony with the clock in his hands. He shakes his head. “You really think you have any way to contact anyone?” He turns on his heel and says to one of the guards. “This charade isn’t working at all. We need another scenario. Shut it off.”

And just like that the world around Tony melts away. 

He’s back in the chair in the laboratory, and directly in front of him is Steve. Steve – who looks mostly dead and is bleeding from his mouth, nose, and ears. His head lolls forward with his mouth open. The fog in Tony’s brain still hangs thick and he cannot parse exactly who _Steve_ is. He knows Steve must be important, he recalls certain images – holding him, touching him. Emotion brews deep in his chest and he sucks in a harsh breath when he thinks about what they’ve done to Steve. He tightens his hands into fists and that’s when he feels the cuffs around his wrists again. Tugging on the restraints, Tony struggles and tries to get out of the bindings. Several of the technicians are standing around Steve but there’s nothing to be done. Tony cannot get out. The whole laboratory stinks of evil lair. It’s just so cliché that Tony wants to puke. How long has he been trapped here? When he glances up at Steve again, he notices at least a five day growth of beard on his face, at least. How long can anyone hold out under these conditions?

Mister Three Piece Suit comes in – or who Tony believe was probably Mister Three Piece Suit in the nightmare land they sent him. Except this man isn’t a man – he’s alien and green and huge. 

One of the technicians – a human – points to Steve and says, “The interface is no longer working to distract him while we probe for traces, sir.”

Mister Three Piece – who is not actually wearing a three piece suit but the worst party costume Tony has ever seen – studies Steve and sighs. “The particles clearly emanate off of this specimen. He’s been exposed to the raw power of the Tesseract.”

“So has the other, so have most of the Avengers. We could probe Stark-.”

Mister Three Piece moves in front of Tony who narrows his eyes so he must look like he’s still out of it. Mister Three Piece strokes a hand down Tony’s head like he’s some kind of pet. “No, I need Stark for his mind. I need his mind malleable. I need him to accept the scenario so I can use him to harness the power of the Tesseract before -.” He stops and then turns away from Tony. His attention focuses on Steve – who Tony has to admit looks mostly dead. The blood on his face congeals. “The Tesseract link is strongest with this one because he was exposed, the detector clearly shows it. Plus we are looking for your leader – this super soldier.” He kicks Steve in the legs but elicits no reaction. “This super soldier and your leader are linked through the Tesseract. If we are to control it and have your leader back as an ally, we need to figure out a way to better probe his mind.”

“The Tesseract isn’t even on Earth,” the technician says, probably stupidly emboldened by the fact Mister Three Piece is talking to him as if he’s an equal. Minions always make that mistake. “You need to go to Asgard, your ship-.”

Mister Three Piece – Green man – lurches at the technician and grabs him around the throat. The other technicians huddle away from the alien. “I don’t need you to tell me where the Tesseract is. I need you to open the link to the Tesseract, you fool. It is an infinity stone. It can warp space. The particles on this super soldier are still strong, even from decades ago. Collecting those particles will free your master and give me a link to the stone, directly.”

Tony’s not sure what the hell Green man is talking about – but the truth is that he knows one thing and that is he needs to get the fuck out of here. 

“Get him back under,” Blue man orders as he drops the limp – probably dead – technician onto the floor. The other technicians scramble to obey him. “Once he’s under and properly interfaced with Stark the system will be strong enough. Stark’s exposure on top of the Captain’s exposure will be enough to activate the stone.”

A lot of what he’s saying doesn’t make any sense to Tony. But he’s not a fool and he knows when to listen and has a knack for analyzing situations and figuring them out. His memory is an oxymoron of empty spaces and questions. If he’s not a shop owner in a little town in the middle of nowhere USA, then who exactly is he? Why does a Green alien care about him? What is a Tesseract?

Just then, the other prisoner lifts his head and with bleary eyes meets Tony’s gaze. He lips are cracked but he mouths a few words that Tony cannot figure out. He needs to do something – he needs to stop this now. So he chooses the only route he ever has but one that always gets him into trouble, but maybe trouble will delay whatever they are trying to do to.

“Hey, Green Man group,” Tony says and the alien spins on his heels to face him.

The idea of anger happens to grossly under estimate the alien’s expression – rage, fury. That works. The word fury activates something, some memory in his head and he recalls a man with a patch over his eye. The memory overlays with the woman in the store, the hardware store. Red hair, a killer body, and a scuba suit or something. How does that fit together?

“Why is he awake?” Green man screams at the technicians.

“Oh Greenie, don’t get mad at them, your little psychic or can I say psychotic link doesn’t work really well. It keeps skipping details, like does my little shop have a lock on the back door or not. Or why the hell do I have to buy so much tuna fish and never fucking eat it?”

Green man snarls at him. He doesn’t anticipate the punch to the face. It crashes into him and the lights flash and screech around him so much he thinks he does hear light instead of just see it. It takes him a few seconds to come back to reality. Green man takes his massive hand and fists it around Tony’s throat. “I only need you to distract him. He’s watching you. Distract him. Play your part you pathetic human and I will let you live to serve me.”

Releasing Tony, the Green alien slaps him in the face again with just enough force to cause the lights to shimmer due to the tears forming in Tony’s eyes. The technicians race around the laboratory as Tony tries to ignore the pain blossoming across his face. He nearly succeeds except for Steve, sitting across from him murmuring words. The green monster laughs at them and then, thankfully, moves away to coordinate the team of human traitors around him. 

Tony jerks and twists in his restraints as Steve continues to mutter. Even as he tries to figure out how he knows Steve, who the green guy actually is, what the hell is a Tesseract, it is Steve that gives him the clue. There’s no mouth guard this time and Tony wonders when it was last time?

“Friday,” he whispers. “Friday. Remember Friday.”

He frowns. “Yeah, yeah, Friday’s in the cuckoo clock, I got it. Whatever the hell that means.”

“Clock,” Steve says and leans his head back on the headrest. He shivers and there are tears staining his face along with the blood. “Watch Friday, watch Friday.”

“Why the hell do I have to watch Friday? What the hell? Is Friday-?” He stops because he can smell the static discharge of the equipment before it generates the pulse that will torture Steve and send him back to the hellish ground hog day again. He keeps repeating it and repeating it in his head.

The technicians stuff the guard back into Steve’s mouth and his eyes go wild and wide. He stares directly at Tony and those startling blue eyes terrify him. He knows those eyes, he’s seen those eyes. He knows when they are frightened, and when they are joyful, when they are sadden, and when they are blissful. He knows those eyes. And he slams his fist down as well as he can in the bindings because hell if he can’t get his brain to fill in any information at all. His brain keeps looping back into the fantasy world they’ve kept him in to somehow manipulate Steve. His brain runs over and over the purpose, but comes up with nothing that’s concrete, nothing to explain why he’s been locked in a fantasy while they torture and electrocute Steve. 

That’s when the thought occurs to Tony, that’s when he realizes he should be electrocuted as well when the machine roars to life and the smell of ozone stains the air. He’s connected to Steve – through the wires and the metal band on his head. He should be electrocuted too, but he’s not. That mean they aren’t directly electrocuted Steve. They are doing something else. They are using the machine to-

And he’s too late again because the jolt hits Steve and he tenses. His body arches and his mouth opens even with the guard in place. Tony spots the tears running freely down his face and wants to yell himself – wants to stop the hell of what’s going on, but the world around him fades and he falls backward into a new place.

“Tony? Tony?” 

He blinks and, standing over the chair he’s tied to, is Natasha. He knows her – she’s the one from the hardware store. He jerks around and realizes the shackle binding him to the head rest is gone. He can move again. She kneels in front of him and smiles. There’s something sad and sweet about her. She places a hand on his knee.

“You’re okay now. We got you.”

“Not the shop?” He looks around – he’s still in the laboratory, still restrained to the chair, but he’s the only one bound to the chair. Steve isn’t there. Not anymore. “Not the shop?”

“No, no, you’re okay now,” Natasha says. Her voice soothes with its softness. He doesn’t think he’s ever heard her so quiet and comforting before and then it hits him as hard as Green man struck him. He knows her. “We’re gonna get you out of here. Everything’s okay.”

“Who, what?” He cannot understand what’s happening, and he doesn’t trust it. How could he? He’s been in a fake life for how long? He cannot even tell. Maybe five days, maybe more.

“A little Hydra, a little AIM, and an alien called the Skrull – that’s all. They must have trapped you and Steve while you were out walking. It’s so sweet that you like to go on walks together, so romantic. Who would have thought?” She smiles but her mouth tightens as she works the lock on his cuffs. 

“Skrull?” He doesn’t understand and half of what she’s saying bounces around in his head like a pinball. He can’t seem to get a decent shot at figuring out what is happening at all. “What the hell?”

“Yeah, believe it or not an alien.” She gets the one cuff open and starts to work on his other wrist. Her fingers are skilled but she takes an extra-long time on the second cuff. He watches her like a dope. His limbs feel too heavy and they won’t move. He licks his lips and tries to form coherent words again. She beats him to it. “I see they left you with the watch. How cuckoo is that?”

“Cuckoo?” He manages and blinks his eyes several times to try and get his brain to switch back into gear. He thinks he needs a reboot. His line of sight shifts over to the empty chair where Steve once sat. He looks back at Natasha who is still taking her time getting him out of the cuff. “Cuckoo?”

“Why wouldn’t they have taken it off you? I mean you could have called Friday,” Natasha says and stands up. “Why didn’t you? Call Friday?”

“What happens on Friday?” He looks up at her as she walks away from him. 

Where is she going? She joins the ranks of the laboratory technicians that he notices in the corner of the room. None of them are bound. None of them are prisoner. He glances at the chair where Steve used to sit and finds Steve there – again. 

“What the hell-?”

“We can’t get him to go under, not all the way.” 

He’s not sure where those words come from – the world fogs out around him and he’s sitting in the shop again but he’s still bound to the chair. Steve is in front of him, the electricity ramps up and he groans. The sight of his blood, of the bruises and burns riles Tony and he struggles against the cuffs. The need to help the stranger, the man, his lover – God, that’s right – his lover fills him with such fear and dread he cannot sit still, he cannot let this delusion take him again, capture him in its prison again.

“Fuck!” 

As the whine and crackle of the electricity breaks the air and then dies out, Steve slumps in his binds and then the chair and the back room of the shop disappears. They’re together but Steve is dying in his arms and he’s not sure what happened and he only knows that this is Steve’s fear.

“Don’t go,” Tony says and aches inside. How could a super soldier fear death? He’s strong and powerful and omnipotent when it comes to fighting and justice and all that crap Tony pokes fun at all the time. But in Tony’s arms, in the sanctum of their lives there is only one thing that Steve is: beloved. Tony doesn’t know what is real and what isn’t. Fact, fiction, fake, delusional. It all blends together. There’s one thing that he does know now that the fog has been cleared – he loves Steve. “Don’t go, don’t leave me.”

“Time, time to go. Friday, time to go,” Steve says and there’s blood on his lips and in his hair and Tony feels the pain in each beat of his heart. Why is Steve dying? Steve is good and fierce. “Time to go.”

“Time to go,” Tony mimics and his eyes fill with tears that obscure his vision, and Steve in his arms. “Time to go.”

“Friday.” Steve’s eyes roll back in his head and Tony only hears one thing – the scream ripped from his own throat. Nothing exists around him, nothing at all except the sound of his own grief. It reverberates and becomes his structure. It runs through his veins and pulses through his neurons. He becomes the sound and the sound becomes light and light explodes into pixels – like singular atoms that burst into subatomic particles.

Every particle around him shifts in and out of existence. He might laugh and think about Schrödinger and his stupid cat but he knows he’s part of the principal as well. He’s here and not. He drifts and becomes more than light and all of light. Above him and below him the universe and stars paint the darkness. He sees the grand design of the galaxy and the beauty of space itself. It is like a canvas and a master painter has splattered it with every color paint in the spectrum. And then his eyes fall upon the center of the universe or maybe just his center and it is a conflagration of thoughts. It isn’t something he sees but more of something he experiences.

He understands the thrill of knowledge and knowing. He flourishes in the excitement of comprehension. He sinks into and submerges himself in the flow, the give and take of ideas. He’s become one with the energy and the idea of space as something more than just distance. It is a thing; it is not just a radius, or a perimeter, or a measurement. It is a living, breathing thing. Space did not exist before the big bang. Space came to be just as everything else did during the expansion. Space spread its wings and became and gave itself to the universe so that the universe come evolve into consciousness. Molding space and controlling space conquers the physical manifestation of the universe. He understands, he remembers.

The Tesseract.

The Avengers.

Steve.

When his mind locks on Steve, he sees him for the first time, trapped in the embrace of the Tesseract, imprisoned in a struggle against space itself – attempting to hold back the red tide of his enemy because within the harnessed power of the Tesseract is the Red Skull himself. Steve and the Red Skull are literally struggling for dominance – as if they are physically fighting. They wrestle for supremacy, trying to control the other as they grapple for power. If Steve fails, if he falls the very structure of the Tesseract, the interconnectedness of space with time might very well disintegrate. The Red Skull’s freedom may contort space, may twist it into something bizarre. 

The words the green alien said come back to Tony – he wanted the Tesseract’s power exposed, he wanted to control it. He also promised to free the Red Skull. Somehow Steve’s tethered to the Tesseract –that’s clear and bright. Tony recalls his lessons as a child, the Red Skull disappeared when the Tesseract and Steve died over 70 years ago. According to the alien, Steve was contaminated with the raw power of the Tesseract. Steve is linked to the power of the Tesseract, the green alien admitted as much – and Tony must be as well. He can see the tendril of light pulsing between the fragmented images of the Red Skull and Steve as they fight for the advantage. Those tendrils reach out to the great expanse of space and one of the finger like tendrils weaves its way into Tony. He’s been infected by the power of the Tesseract as well – he was exposed to it when he flew the damned nuclear warhead into the black void. 

He needs to break the cycle, he needs to break Steve out of the trapped space. He needs to find help. Everything he believed was real; the shop, the government taking his armor, the Header, the Tomb- is all fake. Constructed to make him believe, to manipulate him so that he would help – somehow – the Skrull take control of the Tesseract through their link. Somehow, someway he needs to reach out and destroy the link, he needs to get help. 

His mind races as he watches the universe, the very energy and solidity of it warp and transcend around him into an array of colors and light. There must be a way. Space – space – there is no space without time. Space exists because of the big bang, the explosion, the cataclysm created space and time.

Time.

Time is segmented on the macro scale into seconds and minutes and hours and days and weeks and months and years and decades and generations and centuries and millennia. Time is measured with calendars and clocks. Clocks.

Calendars.

Have weeks and days.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

Friday – Friday.

“Friday.”

A day of the week. Time. A day of the week. A cuckoo clock. A watch. Friday. 

_Do your part_

_Remember_

_Friday_

“Friday.” Time, space. He swallows down the fear, the terror that might be his or could be Steve’s. He remembers and he doesn’t but there’s one thing he knows. “Friday.” He takes a leap of faith. Something he never had until he fell to Earth all of those years ago. He laid down on the wire and he fell to Earth and into a different life. He takes the leap. “Friday, call for help. Friday. Call for help.” He looks down and he’s back in the lab again and Steve is like a ragdoll across from him, burnt and bruised and dying. But he stares at his watch and twists his bound wrist around, hitting the face of the watch and activating it.

“Friday, call for help.”

He doesn’t know if she answers because the world blacks out again and he’s back in the shop standing at the stove top wishing for something more than fucking tuna fish. He needs to hold on, he needs to be in this fantasy world for just a little bit longer. He drops the knife he’s using to spread the tuna fish and goes to the small living space. Spotting the cuckoo clock he taps it. “Friday.”

The bird comes out of the little doors on the top of the clock face. It tweets at him. 

“He’s dying. You have to hurry.”

The little bird chimes the hour. It is midnight or noon. He doesn’t know but a storm blows outside and rattles the windows. The little bird is blue and tweets a little song before it sits on the perch but doesn’t disappear back into the clock. He bites back his fear and waits, waits for the thump on the back porch. He’s waiting for the stranger, he’s waiting for Steve. When is he coming? He has to come. If he comes that means he’s fought past the mental barriers to Tony. It means he’s winning the fight against the Red Skull. Tony’s trapped inside of this Tesseract, this hell with Steve until he breaks the cycle. Or until a little blue bird named Friday sings. 

He waits for the crash, but all that comes is the clap of thunder and the pelting, driving rain against the roof. He glances up at the ceiling and waits. Something’s different this time. Has Steve lost? Have they lost? Steve was so weak. Tony has to get back to the lab but they have him trapped in this damned fantasy as they probe Steve’s mind for the connection to the Tesseract. He rushes back to the clock and wills the damned bird to say something but it just sits there. He doesn’t know what he expects – it is a wooden bird after all.

“Come on, Friday, give me a sign here. I need a damned sign,” Tony says and the thunder rolls outside the window. “Is that a sign? Can you even do that?”

The rain hits the roof top with an angry ping, ping, ping. It sounds like hail and the wind howls by the door. There’s no locks on the door and it rattles against the hinges. He recalls Steve and the Red Skull – forced into a singular type of combat. Steve’s connection to the Tesseract, the Red Skull somehow stuck in the Tesseract set up the perfect storm. The storm screams outside of the door and then a crash of thunder with a bolt of bright lightning shatters the world and flings open the door. It doesn’t succeed in splitting open the fantasy world, of destroying it. All it does is twist the worlds toward one another into a knot or a Mobius strip where fantasy and reality exist on the same plane.

Steve sits before him in the torture chair while at the same time he battles the Red Skull, arms straining against one another. Tony’s tenuous connection to them a bright filament of the Tesseract. Every moment drains more of Steve’s energy. The rain hits Tony in the face and he struggles to stand up, to help Steve but he cannot move because while he’s in the shop, he’s also tied to the chair. Fictional and real dimensions merge. Tony curses to the blackened sky as the rain turns to stars and the flames burn all around them. He screams for mercy, he screams for help, he screams for compassion. Every beat of his heart seems to be reflected in the storm around them. Whatever the alien’s interface has done it’s torn down the fabric of reality and Tony and Steve are stuck in some mad dimension between hell and damnation. 

A scream of horror rips from Tony’s throat. He has nothing else to give and as he realizes this – that they are trapped in the Tesseract along with the Red Skull – something changes. The different reality freeze and something grabs at Tony’s heart, squeezes his chest. He cannot pull a breath in; there is no air. He waits as the world beats out the last moments and then the frozen universe around him – the flames of stars, the horror of Steve’s death, the last of the Red Skull turns to particles like pixels and then bleeds together into a mess of nothingness. The void has him again and he’s falling into darkness. The darkness becomes him and he becomes the darkness. All the fantasies, the fictional places, the realities dissipate and he watches as Steve lets go and surrenders to the night. Tony closes his eyes in failure.

The truth is – the truth is he never expects to open his eyes again. 

When he does, Tony startles and gasps as if he fights for air. But there’s air, and there’s light and the world around him feels different – familiar and almost like home. This isn’t the horrible little shop or the laboratory or inside the stream of the Tesseract. This is home. This is the Tower. He doesn’t trust it. It might be a figment, a fictionalized place. Nothing is real – this he has learned. 

Looking around, Tony spots Bruce bent in a chair next to the bed. For the first time, Tony recognizes that he’s not only in the Tower but he’s actually in his bed in the Tower. He has no idea if this is real or not. “Hey.”

Bruce does not move.

All the other times, no one was real. Perhaps, Steve wasn’t even real – but no – he’s sure of one thing that Steve was with him. Steve was there. He needs to figure out if this is real or yet another delusion played up by a green alien. Was the green alien even real?

“Hey, Big Green?”

Bruce startles and grumbles a few incoherent noises until he gets himself awake and smiles at Tony. “Hey.”

“Are you real?”

“Yeah, pretty much. Don’t I look real?” Bruce asks and stands up. He has on a tweed jacket and some overly big trousers. He looks ridiculous. He rubs at his eyes as he crosses the room to the side of Tony’s bed. “You’ve been asleep for fourteen hours.”

“Is that good? Where’s Steve?” Tony asks.

“The infirmary.” Bruce inhales and then slowly lets it out. “I’m not going to lie to you, Tony. He’s in rough shape. Whatever that alien was doing, he nearly killed Steve. Even the serum is having a difficult time healing him.”

“He’s resting, though,” Natasha says as she walks into Tony’s bedroom. 

Apparently this is a thing now. Anyone and everyone is allowed to waltz into Tony’s bedroom. He doesn’t like people in his space – not his private space. It took him ages to accept Steve’s stuff in here. He jolts up in bed and searches the room – seeing the shield propped to the side of the closet. 

“Resting?” Tony asks. He’s still not sure if she’s real, or any of this is real. 

“The burns are pretty severe. We called in Doctor Cho. Even though she can’t use her artificial regeneration procedure on him, she’s doing the best she can.”

“Which reminds me, I need to get back down there to help them,” Bruce says. He excuses himself and Tony watches him go, wondering, questioning silently. 

As Tony blanks out, thinking about how he can parse reality from fiction, Natasha approaches the bed with her hands folded behind her back. “So, we did some analyses.”

Tony stays mute. He’s not going to supply this figment of his imagination (or Steve’s) with any information at all. The balance of his sanity is weighing more toward the deep end than not. 

“It seems that a member of the Skrull, came here looking for the Tesseract. When he couldn’t find it, he did the next best thing.”

Tony bites back filling in any of the details. Of course, a figment of his imagination would be able to retrieve any details from his brain instantly – wouldn’t it? He taps down the anxiety building and just wants to see Steve. 

“The Tesseract emits tachyon particles that contaminate anyone who has ever been exposed at close range to it.” She waits for him to comment and if she thinks he will – she’s sadly mistaken. He’s done supplying these ruthless shits any information at all. She sighs and continues. “So, the Skrull commander figured out that the Tesseract had been on Earth last due to the whole Chitauri invasion. Well, since it wasn’t here anymore – he decided that he might be able to tap into its –.” And here she uses air quotes. “infinity stone characteristics to harness its power. He made a deal with some human accomplices – Hydra, big surprise – to free their boss from being trapped in the Tesseract.”

Now, Tony’s interested and he cannot deny it. This is tracking with what he experienced, though it has a little more cohesiveness as far as rationality is concerned. 

“There were a few people on Earth that were their targets – you, Steve, Selvig, Clint, and myself. They were able to abduct you and Steve when you went for a walk in Central Park to celebrate your month anniversary.” 

He remembers that detail – the month anniversary. They’d danced around each other for over a year, playing and fighting and generally causing all kinds of angst and irritability for each other, not to mention the pure hell they put the rest of the team through as well. It had been Steve’s birthday and they were arguing – again. What about Tony still doesn’t remember. They were in the kitchen of the common floor in the Tower when Steve threw down the towel he had been using to dry the dishes (oh yes, he remembers now – the fight started when Tony chastised Steve for not using the dishwasher and de-evolved from there), crosses the space between them, and nearly sent Tony into heart attack lane with fright. He’d really thought Steve finally broke and was going to literally punch his way out of the fight. Instead, he cupped Tony’s face in his hands, pushed him up against the wall, and kissed him – thoroughly, beautifully, and breathlessly. Afterward, Steve parted from him and said, “Finally, one way I can get you to just shut up.”

On July 4th they had their first kiss, their first date and it had been a month later they celebrated with ice cream and a walk in Central Park. He doesn’t remember much of anything after something hit him in the back of the head and he stood there gazing down at his splattered ice cream cone on the pavement. He does remember one thing – the terrorized look in Steve’s eyes – that’s all. Then he remembers standing outside the shop, arms folded, the muddy road before him and a Header – Steve – racing toward him from the Tomb. He shivers. 

Natasha keeps talking as Tony pieces together the fragments of reality mixed with fantasy. “What we gleaned from the computers and a little interrogation – one of my specialties – is that they really, really wanted Steve. He was exposed to the Tesseract in its pure state. It did something to Steve – we’re not sure what – but it inexplicably linked him to the Tesseract. He’s a conduit to controlling it.”

Now Tony needs to ask, he needs to know. “So why did they need me?”

Natasha lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “This is all theorizing, but we think it is because they needed someone to keep him occupied as they dug around and looked for the link. The more his mind was distracted, the less defenses he could throw at them, the easier it was to get to his link.”

“So I was a distraction?” 

“Yeah, pretty much,” Natasha says and she sits on the edge of the bed. Her back is to Tony, but she peers over her shoulder at him. “Can you tell me how?”

“How?”

“There was an interface, a link. It seemed to mimic a little of your B.A.R.F. technology but not truly. What we can tell, what we figured out from the recordings is that you lived inside of a fantasy they designed for you with information pulled from Steve’s memories.”

Tony clamps his mouth shut but hot tears prickle at the corners of his eyes. It makes sense, perfect sense. He kept remembering pieces of Steve’s life. His mother never sang in Gaelic, but Steve’s mother probably did. He can still hear the echoes of her voice in his head. Every time he went to town, he met Rumlow – a man that Tony did not know but Steve did. He’d been part of Steve’s strike team at SHIELD. He harassed Tony almost every time. Tuna fish, bread, soup – he was always hungry. He turns his head away and covers his eyes. He was living in a strange world, a merger of their programming, Steve’s memories, and his own life all mixed together. 

“So Steve supplied the fantasy world?” Tony says. “They used his brain power to design this world-.”

“To a degree, some of it was already programmed but he populated it. Steve manipulated it as well as he could,” Natasha says.

“Yeah,” Tony says and swallows down the bile. “You were there. You know, you were there. He tried to get through to me. He tried to tell me over and over again. I couldn’t understand it. He kept telling me to remember, and to call Friday. I couldn’t understand.”

She leans over and lays a hand on his arm. “But you did. You called Friday. That’s the only reason we were able to find you.”

He swallows down the fear and then he remembers – Bruce never came back after Ultron. The Tower was a shambles, they moved the whole operation to Upstate New York. Shit. Shit. Shit. Scrambling away from her, he falls off of the bed and shakes his head. “I’m still there. I’m still there.”

“Tony, no.” She stands up.

“Bruce never came back. Bruce is gone. He didn’t come back. After Ultron, he never came back.”

She turns to the side and twists her mouth in a mockery of a smile. “Well, shit. The little things, right? The little damned details.” The room shifts and then melts around him and it all puddles before his feet until he’s back in the damned chair again with Steve opposite of him, suffering and moaning. At least they don’t have the mouth guard in anymore. His whole body trembles and Tony can practically feel the pain radiating off of him.

The green alien glares at him. There’s a frustration and a deeply seeded anger growing in the monster. The technicians are jittering and rushing around like frightened prey trying to find a way out of a trap. It reminds Tony of someone – of himself.

“Get them to the cell, we can’t get any more out of them today,” the monster says. “Tomorrow we will clear their minds again and try one more time. If we need to, we can press the limit. I don’t really care if they live or die.”

A technician calls in guards. The four guards unlock their bindings but even when Tony tries to launch himself at the guards, he only wobbles and face plants onto the concrete floor. The guards laugh at him and he doesn’t even try to pull himself up. Since he’s so fucking weak, he’s going to let them do all the work and then he can evaluate the situation and strategize as Steve would say. He’ll figure it out for both of them. 

The only problem is he has no memory of the cell. How long have they been captive? More than five days, he knows this – but does he? He can hardly remember his name or the sequence of events or even if he really truly is in love with Steve. He’s totally fucked. The only thing that’s true and certain is that he needs to get them out of this hell. He lets the guards drag him through the laboratory and out into the corridor. From the looks of it they are underground. He glances around while trying to remain docile in their arms. There are pipes and wires lining the ceiling and walls. Some of the pipes are leaking, and puddles of water dot the concrete floor. They are definitely in an underground lair – how fucking cliché. He’s starting to hate his life – well right now. He’s sure he loves Steve – he knows it. It feels right when just about nothing else feels right.

They toss him into an empty room that looks like a storage closet and throw in an unconscious Steve as well. One of the guards laughs at him and gives Steve a quick kick to the groin before he leaves. The door locks – multiple times. Multiple locks. Shit. 

He scurries over to Steve’s side and touches him, checks his pulse. It’s stronger than it should be considering his state but still weak. He strokes a hand down Steve’s cheek. “Steve, come on.”

Steve moans in response and tries to roll over but there are so many burns on his body, and his chest is a mottled tapestry of welts and scorch marks. Tony can only guess that they think the pain will keep him passive so they can perform these wicked experiments. Tony looks at his watch – and then considers Friday.

No, no, they know about Friday. She’s been in so many of the scenarios. They want to him to believe he’s escaped because if he does then he lets his guard down and he starts to live the fantasy life. He cannot explain why they started with such an odd fantasy – where he was stuck in butt fuck nowhere with a history of being isolated and trapped. That seems like a dead giveaway. As he considers it, it dawns on Tony that the scenario had been Steve’s. The first scenario, the story, all of it had been constructed by Steve and fed to Tony. It was fed to Tony by Steve to keep Steve’s mind occupied as they probed for the link to the Tesseract space and the Red Skull. If any of what he’s learned is to be believed, that is. Steve had fed him a dinner of lies, of unbelievable situations so that Tony would question, Tony would fight. It had been Steve all along trying to get them out, fighting his way into the picture each time to try and get Tony to help him, help them.

Now, Tony has to do his part. He has to get them out of here. He glances around the bare storage room and except for what he has in his possession – there’s nothing at all. The bare light bulb in the ceiling is at least three meters above his head – he can’t reach it even if it was useful. Steve’s completely nude and incapacitated. There are burns, first, second, and a few third degree burns he would venture littered over his body. What they did to him and why opens up a hole in Tony’s chest that should no longer be there. So it will be up to Tony and what he has on him to rescue them. 

But first he has to ensure that this is real. The whole thing is real. He needs to do something that Steve would not expect or the programmers. He looks down at the watch. Steve knows it can release a concussive burst, he knows it has a link to Friday. The technicians in the lab know everything there is to know about the public Tony Stark. What they don’t know is that Tony creates redundancies, because he doesn’t trust a damned thing or a person in the world. He doesn’t even trust himself.

Before he can do anything though, Steve shifts and comes to awareness. It isn’t true consciousness, but a kind of semi-awareness and Tony wonders if Steve is caught up in the dream state during the torture or is it only pain for him. He groans and blinks away tears. 

“Shush, I’m here. I’m going to get us out of here,” Tony says and then mutters, “If I can figure out what the fuck is real and what’s not.”

“Not dreaming,” Steve says and smiles. “You remembered?”

Tony gathers Steve to him and kisses his forehead. “Yes. I remembered. Always.” That’s a lie but Steve doesn’t need to be specific right now, he needs comfort. Under his touch, Steve quakes as the shock takes him and drains him of his last reserves. Tony doesn’t know enough about the serum to know how long Steve can last, how much damage can be done before he succumbs to his injuries. He’d always depended on Bruce to know enough about the serum, just in case something ever happened to Steve. Though, Tony has to admit, he never worried much about Steve until Wanda did the voodoo on him and pop – that came into his head. Lots of fun that happened to be. Taking care of Steve had become a priority but it was more about making sure he had the right uniform, or was properly fed, not anything about the damned serum and the stress his body could take before things started to break down. 

Tony rocks Steve in his arms until he settles and his eyes close. Hopefully, he sleeps, but Tony cannot be sure. The best that Tony can do right now is to try out his one backup – the one thing no one would know about other than Tony himself. He lays Steve partially down on his legs because he cannot stand the thought of separating even for a moment from his beloved. He inhales and then touches the watch. 

He brings his wrist up to his mouth and doesn’t worry about voicing the word at all. Because Tony’s smarter than the damned idiots holding him. It might have taken him days to figure this out, they might have left him unconscious or sedated him most of the time when he wasn’t in the chair to be used as a distraction, but this time – this time it all changes. Because he is Tony Fucking Stark. 

He can nearly feel the metal alloy of the watch with its tiny star on the face. He mouths the name– Jocasta. The watch shifts on his wrist and then he pulls it out and it covers his hand and palm. He doesn’t have time to wait, Steve’s life teeters in the balance. Leaning down, he says, “We’re going to get out of here, Steve, but I need you to wake up now.”

Somehow Steve responds, he flutters his eyes and, for a moment, Tony recalls watching the same action so many times on so many mornings. One of his special, secret pleasures has been this – the subtle shift of consciousness and beauty as Steve rose to awareness. When he discovered this pleasure, he tried to always awake earlier so he could see it. And now he hates to force him to consciousness since it only brings him pain. 

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but you have to wake up. I can’t carry you. I don’t have a suit.”

Steve only nods in agreement. 

He wants desperately to wipe that pained expression off of Steve’s face. He wants desperately to see Steve smile again. All he has lived through for the past week is seeing Steve hurt or running or dying. A part of him fears that he’ll be stuck in this forever, and Steve will be endlessly tortured. He brings Steve up to a sitting position and frowns as he glances down at his legs. Why the hell they burned his legs, Tony will never understand, but they are sadistic fucks and that’s enough to explain it. Tony slips his arm under Steve’s and then curls his hand around his side.

“Okay, on three,” Tony says and gets his feet under him. “One, two, three – up we go.”

Steve tries, he really tries to hoist himself on to his feet, but he falters and almost pitches over as they walk across the tiny storage room. Tony catches him but he wavers on his feet and claws at the wall to stay standing. This is not good for an escape. He scans the room, there’s nothing. It’s a gray painted room, maybe 2 by 3 meters and that’s it. Except for the lightbulb and the door – there’s nothing else here. Except on the floor. 

There’s blood splattered on the floor. Old blood, at least days old. Considering the fact that the fantasy delusions fed to him over the course of the last week weren’t as detailed, he has to take it as a good sign that maybe, just maybe this is real. He shuffles Steve over to the door and then he has to figure out if he’s going to pick the lock or blast it. Blasting it wastes a shot and he only has two. Two. Depending on where he is, he’s not going to get any help for a while. If they’re being held somewhere in the continental United States fifteen minutes or so, but more than that it will be longer, too long for Steve.

Okay, try to get some information. “Steve? Come on Baby, I need some info.”

Steve is slumped against the wall with his eyes close. He’s using the wall to keep on his feet. He nods and peeks at Tony with cracked eyes.

“How long did it take to get us here? Are we still in the US or not?”

Steve presses a bloodied hand against the wall and nods. “Yeah, only a few hours. No plane. Just a truck, or van. Don’t remember.”

He still has no clue how they took down Captain America, but Tony suspects threats to his life probably stopped Steve from fighting. Steve never knows when to save himself. God damned martyr. “But you know there wasn’t a plane or anything?”

Steve licks his lips and a small whine comes out that he tries to suppress. “Yeah, I was awake the entire time.”

“Really?” Tony says and his doubts fuel the fear that this is just another fantasy. “Why would they keep you awake?”

Steve laughs and it is mirthless and raspy. “Hurt, Tony. I can’t not now.”

The answer rackets up the fear, but Tony tries to continue to believe they are free of the contraption and not being used like animals in a laboratory. Mad scientists and their experiments. Where did they all come from – for pity’s sake he was in labs for ages and never met one of the crazy ass scientists that are always bent on taking over the world. He shakes away the random thoughts and gets back to the issue at hand. The damned door.

He needs to pick the lock but he literally has nothing and Steve’s walking around in his damned birthday suit. That’s another thing on the checklist of things to do – get Steve some pants. Tony studies the knob – it’s just a standard issue door knob but it locks from the outside and there are multiple locks, from what he heard. He _has_ to blow a shot on the door. There’s no other way. 

“I can do it,” Steve says and pushes off of the wall.

“Wh-what?” Tony asks and Steve grabs his shoulder for balance.

“We need to get out, I can break the door down. Shouldn’t be too hard,” Steve says and shivers. 

“You’re not in any shape-.” Tony says and he can feel the weakness in Steve’s grip, his exhaustion, and his pain. “We can find another way.”

Steve searches around the small space and then gives Tony a half-smile. “Sure we can. I don’t even have any pants. We don’t have a lot of options here, Tony. We don’t have a choice.”

Tony grimaces because he has to agree. Steve’s being logical, rational Steve – Tony can almost believe he’s not in the hellhole delusional world anymore. He nods and says, “What can I do to help?”

Steve lets go of Tony, steadies himself in front of the door, and then says, “Just stand back.”

Once Tony steps away, Steve rams his shoulder against the door. It doesn’t give. There’s a creak to the door, but nothing pops. Steve winces and then finds his way to his feet again after he slid down. He puts a hand up to keep Tony from coming to his aid. Again he slams against the door, and Tony hurts because any day of the week Captain America could simply yank the door off of its hinges. But right now, Steve Rogers is leaving blood prints all over the door. 

“One more time,” Steve says and heaves in a breath, glares at the door as if by sheer will alone he can get the door to fall, and then with a leap, he kicks the door down. It pops away from the hinges and the locks burst free. The door hits the single guard in the head as he’s talking on a communicator. Steve rips the handheld away and crushes it. Luckily for them but not the guard, the impact with the door put him stone cold out. 

One guard. 

Tony looks to Steve and asks, “Have they dumped us in here before, because I don’t remember it.”

Steve holds onto the door frame for support. “Yeah, most of the time you were out from the -.” He doesn’t finish his description. “Other times they just gave you an injection. They didn’t want you to be pulled out of my head.”

Tony narrows his eyes at Steve. He hates to do this – especially as they are trying to escape, but he has to reassure himself that they are actually escaping. “What about you?”

Steve only makes a tiny noise in the back of his throat like the memory is too much to handle. He then goes to the guard and twists his lips. “Too short. Let’s go.”

He’s right, of course. Tony has to work on the supposition that this is real until the evidence presents itself that it isn’t real. His test of the watch and what he said to the watch should help out in that respect, but it will take time. He knows that much. Tony joins Steve in the corridor that’s really just a narrow walk way of a basement. As soon as Tony offers his arm, Steve takes it without complaint. He sags against Tony for a long moment before he gets his legs again and forces the strength to come back to them. Even Tony can see his muscles trembling in protest. 

“I’m sorry,” Tony says and helps Steve down the darkened corridor.

“What for?” Steve scrunches up his face as the pain shoots through him with each step. Steve usually hides his pain so well, so easily. Even from the first, during the Chitauri invasion, Steve hid the fact he was hit. The idea that Steve cannot hide it now is either a sign that they are still in a fantasy world or that Steve is really badly hurt. Either one doesn’t present a great option.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t aware sooner,” Tony says, testing the words because he’s still not sure he’s awake now. 

Steve hangs his head as they make slow progress. “Doesn’t matter.” He flinches as they walk down a step. “Right now, we get out, and get help. You tried your best. Your damned best. You don’t know it, but all the time they were trying to distract me, I was there with you. I saw everything that happened.”

“Everything?”

Steve presses his lips in a thin line.

“Well, I’m fucking glad I didn’t jerk off or something,” Tony mutters.

Steve spits out a laugh and his cheeks redden. “Well, that would have been at least entertaining and kinda hot. Moreso than you buying Windex. What was with that anyhow?”

Tony loses the thread of the conversation after Steve says _kinda hot_. He has to admit that it really isn’t what he thinks should solidify the deal for him as far as this being reality – but the fact is that his captors don’t know about their new relationship and Steve always falls into a Brooklyn accent when he’s a little nervous or embarrassed. It’s sweet and charming and all kinds of right. It fits and so many different things did not fit in the dream land scenarios. 

“Tony?” Steve says as he limps along.

“No, it’s okay. Let’s just get out of here.”

“I’m ready if you are.” Steve grips his arm around Tony and shows a good face, but Tony can feel the small tremors coursing through his body, can see the blood leak from his many wound, can witness the pain as it jolts through him with every damned step.

If he trusts this to be reality and Steve’s sense of how far they were moved to the stupid underground lair, then by Tony’s calculation he’s almost home free. Almost. Even as his confidence ratchets up a notch, he hears the march of boots on the concrete floor. Steve tenses beside him as if he prepares to fight and that’s just ludicrous considering how much it took out of him to simply get the door down. No, this is going to be all Tony. 

With a glance around he spots a bench to the side with tools on it. A large wrench will do. He tucks Steve into a small nook between the piping and the duct work much to his protests.

“I can help, Tony. I’m not bad off, I’m not,” Steve says even as his body wilts onto the floor once Tony releases him. That’s more like it – the Steve in the nightmare world always collapsed in the backroom of the shop, collapsed and teetered on death. This Steve, his Steve is a fighter, always gets back up. Always fights to his last breath. 

“No, stay,” Tony says and puts up his armored covered palm. “I got this, I really do.”

Steve spots the armor in the dim light and considers Tony – only Steve would weigh whether or not it would be a good thing to sit one out or go to battle naked when Tony has tech to help them. It briefly worries him that he didn’t use the watch in the park when they were abducted, but even as he questions it in his mind, the six soldiers come at them. Tony has to aim just right, so he races to the workbench, picks up a wrench and flings it at the lead guard. Tony’s no Captain America and the shot goes wide – which is just perfect for him because now he has them turned toward him and not toward the open space. He aims the hand armor and fires. The sonic force explodes and hurtles them into the opposite wall. They crumple down onto the floor. 

Checking the charge, Tony estimates he has enough power for at least one more shot, possibly two if he’s careful. He dashes over to Steve and gathers him back up onto his feet. Quickly he gets them situated so that he can help Steve walk or limp – limp is a better word. 

“Get some of the tools,” Steve says and points to the bench. It means leaving Steve again, but Steve nods and grips the pipes to stay on his feet. His feet slide in the puddled water, but he manages to stay upright.

Tony scoops up a few wrenches and a hammer. It’s not Mjolnir but it will do. Then he goes to one of the unconscious soldiers. He looks about the right size so Tony takes one of the wrenches hits him in the head to make sure he’s not going to wake up any time soon, and then efficiently pulls off his pants. 

“Hit the others,” Steve murmurs and there’s something troubled in his eyes as if he doesn’t like the order.

That’s Steve, he hates hurting people but he understands when it is necessary. Tony does what’s asked but not brutally or maliciously, but just as efficiently as he took care of removing the pants. While Tony ensures they won’t have a tail, Steve fumbles with the pants Tony threw to him, trying to get them on. It takes too long and Tony has to help him, but at least he’s not naked anymore. The pants stick to his burnt legs, but Steve doesn’t complain, yet he does shiver. From the cold or shock, Tony doesn’t know. 

Tony grasps him by the arm, knowing full well it won’t be enough, so he slips his arm under Steve’s shoulder and they start forward. He feels ridiculous about the entire thing. He can’t defend and help Steve – not without the armor and not against an army. Steve only lingers for a moment on the heap of guards that Tony incapacitated. 

“Look at it this way, it was them or us. And they’re the bullies.”

Steve doesn’t respond but grits his teeth and they move through the bowels of the basement. Tony tries to listen for any movement either on this level or above them in order to glean any information of where they are being held but it is quiet except for Steve’s thin breathing. Even as they weave their way around a furnace that looks like something out Steve’s day, Tony monitors Steve’s condition. It’s not getting better.

Steve notices, of course he notices. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“Sure you are, that’s why you can barely walk on your own,” Tony says and grips Steve tighter. He cannot believe they were just celebrating a month of finding their way to one another. It might seem insane or stupid to annotate a month anniversary, but for Tony it meant something special. After Ultron, he didn’t think there would be much more he could give or get from the world. Pepper had told him she couldn’t handle the stress and he wasn’t going to stop – he just couldn’t. They both realized that this mantra – ‘the suit and I are one’ – was far more true than either of them completely understood at the onset of their romance. It was better for both of them – but they both took it hard. It is a difficult thing to love each other and also come to terms with the fact that they could not be romantic partners because on a fundamental level they did not fit. So the idea – that Steve had pined from afar ending up saving Tony in many ways. Ways he still doesn’t like to admit to even himself.

“Do you see what I see?”

Tony follows Steve’s line of sight and spots it. “It’s some kind of water treatment facility.” Above them is what looks to Tony to be an overflow channel. The channel piping is huge, larger than either of them put together. Going in it is impossible and dangerous and Tony isn’t planning on that at all. “If that’s an overflow channel for a water treatment facility, then filters and the chemical feed room is down stream of it.”

“Why are they here?” Steve says.

“It isn’t just about getting the Tesseract. Green alien – if that’s who was holding us - and his technicians are probably planning a terrorist attack to control this part of the state and put the country on notice,” Tony says and then heaves out a breath. Before he’s able to formalize a plan, he hears a call from above like someone is yelling down a stairwell. “Shit.”

“We have to get out of here,” Steve says and Tony cannot agree more. It also serves as a piece of evidence that this must be real – he cannot think of a time in the past years that Steve has been to a water treatment facility. 

“They probably can’t get a hold of our friends back there,” Tony whispers and shoves Steve behind him, which is half ridiculous and half pitiful. Steve tries to stop Tony, but there’s no way that he’s going to allow a seriously injured Captain America to come to his aid when he still has at least one shot with his handset.

“You down there?” Someone calls from above and Tony searches for where the voice is coming from – he doesn’t immediately see the stairs. 

Steve knocks him in the elbow and when he gets Tony’s attention points to the alcove they passed when they noticed the overflow channel. The stairs. They have to go that way anyhow, so Tony gestures for Steve to follow him and starts forward, hoping to hell that he can limp along and keep up. The sound of one person coming down metal stairs echoes in the underground cavern. Tony notches himself at the corner leading to the alcove and then Steve yanks him away. 

He puts a hand to his lips and then offers Tony the wrench again. He’s right. Tony doesn’t want to blow his last shot on one person. So when the guard comes down the stairs, Tony rushes at him before he can react and swings the wrench like a baseball bat at his face. The head of the wrench hits the guard in the face and Tony hears and feels the crack of bone before he drops to the floor without making a sound. Steve drags himself over to Tony, his face pale and drawn, but he’s smiling. 

“You’re pretty good with that thing.”

Tony shrugs. “Maybe I should add one to the armor.” He studies the metal stairs, waiting for anyone else to join their victim, but no one comes – yet. “Come on.”

Steve shakes his head. “No, Tony, you go.”

It terrifies Tony that Steve might be giving up, and not just because it could mean that this whole scenario is fake and he’s playing the role in his mind to keep Steve distracted from the true purpose – to probe his mind and find the link to the Tesseract. “No, no. You’re fucking kidding me right? No.”

“Yes,” Steve says. “I can’t climb the stairs, I can barely stand up.” He is listing to the side, using one of the leaky pipes to keep on his feet. “Go, get help. I can find some place to hide.”

“I have help. It’s coming, but you need to come with me.”

“I need not to slow you down,” Steve says. “You know it’s the best way. You’re smart, a damned genius, so don’t tell me that you don’t know that it is smarter for you to go and get help than to drag me along. I’m too slow, the room is looping around me like I’ve been on the damned cyclone at Coney Island one too many times. Please.”

“Steve.”

“Go.” Steve says and he’s failing, slipping down to the floor.

“Oh no, no, no,” Tony says and rushes to his side. He helps Steve down to the floor and then peers over his shoulder waiting for the soldiers or the green alien to come down the stairs. “We have to go.”

“Just help me up,” Steve says and his hand falls into a slimy puddle on the ground. “I need to get up.”

Tony curses inwardly, but he knows that Steve is right. They are coming, soon. And he won’t be able to get up the stairs in time. So, Tony guides Steve over to the overflow channel and tucks him into the corner. He gives him the hammer. “I’ll be right back. I swear it.”

“I’m good.” Steve nods. “Go, hurry.”

Tony starts to leave but then drops back on his knees next to Steve. “Hold on, okay? Okay?”

“I’m not going anywhere. I still want to find out about the Windex,” he says with a wink.

It warms Tony’s heart but also causes the ache in his chest to spread until it feels like he’s inhaling barbs when he breathes. He reaches for Steve, embraces him, and then kisses his cracked lips. He tastes the blood there, and Tony’s not entirely sure it was just from the chapped lip. He worries it might be worse than Steve is admitting. But he separates from Steve, only once looking behind him but Steve curls into the small corner with the pipes all around him and the overflow channel churning above him. 

Tony takes to the staircase, his boots scraping on the metal. The sound reverberates in the stairwell but he cannot stop. He needs to get out and get help. He looks down at his wrist. The tiny star on the face of his _watch_ blinks indicating the incoming assistance. All he needs to do is to get outside. Immediately when he tops the stairs a group of five men come at him. He runs at them but then throws himself onto the floor, sliding on the tile. They jump and leap over him, but it puts them in the perfect position – behind him and with their backs to the stairs. Targeting them, he releases another concussive shockwave and they tumble down backwards. There must have been another person in the control room because the next thing he knows is the alarms are going off. The place is in chaos, there are dead people lying all over the plant like it was only recently taken over. But it doesn’t actually look like an official water treatment plant. It looks more like a chemical production plant. 

He’s walked right into a control room with glass windows overlooking a surrounding area filled with large silos. He’s not sure if the place was just taken over within the past week, but he’s betting it was. Considering the stench of the decaying corpses, Tony’s pretty sure the business was targeted by the psycho maniac green alien within the last week or so. Tony walks along the windows searching the sky. “Come on, come on.”

He taps the watch again and it alarms. Racing to the doors of the control room, Tony locks them and listens as the alert system calls for a full response to escaped prisoners. He has no idea if there’s another way to the underground and that leaves Steve’s vulnerable. He has half a mind to rush back downstairs but then he sees the glint of metal in the sky. 

“Fucking finally,” Tony says. “Jocasta, break through.”

After that, the world spins at a double pace. The armor bursts through the glass pane and then encompasses him. He settles inside it. An old friend. 

“Scan for hostiles,” Tony says and the HUD comes to life. This is the first and only suit that has Jocasta downloaded. He learned his lesson with JARVIS to always build redundancies and while he loves Friday’s sarcastic wit, he needs Jocasta’s intelligent objectivity. 

“A half dozen are moving in on your position, Tony,” Jocasta says. She has a virtual projection of herself in the corner of the HUD. 

“Steve’s downstairs, scan for him and hostiles.”

“Another dozen are searching the lower level. It looks like Captain Rogers is on his feet and attempting to climb the stairs.”

“Son of a bitch,” Tony says and heads toward the stairwell. In the armor it will be a tight fit but he has to get in there since according to the HUD read out Steve’s vitals are falling and falling madly. 

“We have several hostiles approaching on multi-levels. I have to tell you there is one hostile that I am not getting a clear reading on. He or she does not seem to be human.”

“And that would be the green alien,” Tony curses as he enters the stair well. Peering over the railing he sees that Steve has taken it upon himself to attempt to ascend the stairs and failed. He huddles in the corner with the hammer up and ready to find but he’s flailing miserably. “Hold on darling, I’m coming.” Just as he announces his plan several guards arrive at Steve’s position. Tony doesn’t think, because now he’s on his element. The crazy shop scenario with the Windex and tuna fish was all wrong and he understands that now – that it was Steve’s attempts to tell him that it was an altered reality that it wasn’t their reality at all. This - this is what he knows. He zooms down the tight space, firing as he goes hitting the attackers with unabashed glee. He twists and flips around to landing standing on the landing with Steve, but in front of him. A literal armored shield.

More attackers flood the stairwell and Tony looks up, sees the ceiling, estimates it thickness as Jocasta streams data on probabilities and potential hazards. He ignores it all. “Come on, Cap, we have a date.” He scoops Steve into his one arm because in the suit he can easily manage Steve’s weight. His shoulder rockets fire at the ceiling and he flies instead toward the control room. In a jumble of arms and legs they pitch forward into the room and right into a new batch of hostiles. Luckily, Jocasta is ready and Tony tells her to fire at will. She hits all of her targets.

“Well done,” Tony says and checks on Steve, lying still beside him. 

“Tony, he’s unconscious and in shock. He needs medical attention immediately.”

“Then let’s go,” Tony says and this time holds him in both arms, clutched to his chest and takes off in a blast through the shattered windows and into the sky. Jocasta confirms that they are only a few hundred miles from New York City, where Steve and Tony had been staying for a while away from the Avengers facility in Upstate New York. It had been Tony’s idea for them to get away from the rest of the team as they built their nascent relationship. A few weeks away from the togetherness of the team would do them good. Dealing with training the new team always pre-occupied Steve’s head space so getting him out of the facility to some place he could just hang out and be Steve Rogers instead of Captain America had been critical. 

Now, Tony navigates toward the Avengers facility. Jocasta alerts the medical team that they have incoming and almost immediately Natasha on the line.

“Finally, we’ve been looking all over for you since you disappeared last weekend,” she says over the comm-link.

He checks the date – it’s been six days. “I’m sending coordinates to the nest of Hydra sympathizers and an alien – maybe a Skrull – unknown. Suggest you get the team up and ready to go.”

“Will you and Steve-.”

“No,” he stops her before she can even ask about their participation in the take down. “Steve’s in bad shape. Once I get there, I’m staying on base.”

“Understood, Black Widow out,” Natasha says and the comms go dead.

Adrenaline gets him through the next few hours. When he lands at the Avengers facility, he’s in luck because Doctor Helen Cho is there and a swarm of the brightest, and smartest medical staff with her. Steve is taken out of his arms too fast but there’s not a thing that Tony can do – he has to let him go. While the doctor and her staff examine Steve, Tony gets out of the armor and finds himself ushered into a medical bay to be checked out as well. He insists he’s fine and would like to find out about the team’s attack on the base. 

When Rhodey walks into the bay a few minutes later, Tony shuts up. He would have thought that Rhodes would have gone with the team, and that just increases his unease. He starts to think that perhaps this whole thing is still a set up. When the nurse examining him asks him to lay down on the gurney so that she can hook up some leads to check his heart function, he’s had enough. “No can do. I am needed.”

Rhodey is just about to object, when Tony jumps down from the gurney, grabs his arms and guides him out of the bay. He really wants to go and wait for word on Steve, but right now he needs to get off of the medical floor at the facility. He needs a little fresh air. Rhodey lets him push him along until they are standing on the balcony of Cap’s suite. Why he naturally gravitated there, Tony cannot say.

“Okay, Tony, tell me what’s going on? I got a cryptic message from Natasha saying I had to stay behind on an op because she was sure you would burst into flames or something.”

Tony inhales, exhales and then says, “Whatever they were doing; they pulled one over on us.”

“Yes, I heard Cap is not in a good way,” Rhodey agrees. Rhodey has respect for Steve, and they work well together but there’s not a lot of love in their relationship. 

“Yeah, he almost died,” Tony snaps because he’s not ready nor is he willing to deal with their little rivalry for his attention. Who would have thought the two of them could be so petty? It was kind of nice when Tony first noticed the two of them vying for his attention, playing the best friend role, trying for whatever favor they could get. It was stupid because both of them were acting out of character, completely. It really amused Tony and he kind of played along. It was fun – but now it is a distraction that Tony does not want or need.

Rhodey holds up his hands. “I get it. The guy you care about-.”

“The guy I love,” Tony corrects.

“Love? Seriously, you’ve only been going out with him for a month,” Rhodey says and shakes his head. Here it is comes; the condescendence. The part where Rhodey is trying his best to take care of Tony, but it comes off as patronizing. “You can’t be in love.”

“Yes, I can. And I should know my own mind and my own heart so I would ask you to at least suffer my choices in silence.” He’s never been that cold or heartless to Rhodey – hell, Rhodey got him through the worst of his alcoholism. Helped him through a lot of his battles with his inner demons. Rhodey, he needs. “I’m sorry. I’m hyped up, just over tense.”

Rhodey nods. “I get it and I apologize, too. Steve’s important to you and I’m glad you have him. I just wanted to make sure you were okay too. I don’t know what happened-.”

“They tortured him, not me,” Tony says and his voice fails him. He hears the crack and the sob. “Any time I woke up, I’d see him, in that damned chair. I hope Natasha cuts that green fucker’s balls off and shoves them down his throat.”

Rhodey takes it all in and doesn’t judge. “Green fucker?”

“I hate aliens.”

“Don’t we all,” Rhodey says and then places his hand on Tony’s shoulder. “You need to get checked out, even if they didn’t physically torture you. You were with Steve, you went through something-.”

“They kept me in this weird twilight zone where I kept making tuna fish sandwiches and buying Windex. But sometimes I bought circuit boards but all the time Steve was there and he was dying and I couldn’t st-.” The sob curls tight in his throat and he feels like he might choke.

Rhodey brings Tony into his arms and holds him. They aren’t friends like this – they are but not like this, not demonstrative. Only when Rhodey found Tony in the desert – at extreme times – do they embrace. Is this an extreme time? Tony guesses it probably is and he holds on. 

“Boss?” It’s Friday and Tony startles at her voice. A flashback of the word Friday floats through his head. Damn. 

“Yes?”

“One of the medical staff has requested to speak with you concerning the Captain’s condition.”

“Okay, okay.” He doesn’t look at Rhodey. He just leaves the balcony, leaves the sliding glass doors open, and moves through the suite with a singular purpose. He meets the woman in the main lounge of the living quarters. 

“Mister Stark?” 

He jerks at his name and sees a young woman with an ID that states she’s a physician’s assistant waiting to speak with him. “Yeah?” He wipes away the tears and clears his throat, trying to show that he can handle anything, any news.

She waits a minute for him to compose himself and he’s thankful for that. “Mister Stark, first I would like to ask you to submit to a thorough examination after your ordeal. Doctor Cho as the CMO would like to be able to evaluate your status as well.”

He nods and waves it away. “I will but first Cap?”

“From what you told us when you arrived, Captain Rogers has suffered over the last week from multiple electrical burns and possibly whippings.” 

Rhodey flinches in response to the description. Tony nods again. “Yeah, I don’t know. All I know is that he was exposed to electrical shock multiple times but I saw the whip marks and assumed at some points while they let me sleep they might have continued torturing him to break him.” He sounds so logical and sane. Rational, but he feels like he’s crumbling inside.

“The electrical burns concern us the most. He was in a state of shock when he arrived, but we’ve treated that immediately. To treat the electrical burns and the resulting physical injuries we’ve immediately assessed him. We’ve began fluid resuscitation with a mannitol solution. This will help to stabilize his kidney function. We’re also monitoring his cardiac output to ensure that there was little damage to his heart-.”

“His heart? He has damage to his heart?” Tony mutters and touches the scar tissue where the arc reactor once sat. He remembers looking for it in his nightmare, in the fake scenario. He remembers thinking about it like it was a security blanket. He doesn’t even know where that came from. 

“No, not that we know of, but he’s been through a lot and we have to ensure that his heart is healthy.”

“That sounds reasonable,” Rhodey says and peers at Tony. “Right, that’s reasonable.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony says and it’s hard to focus.

“We’re assessing the burns now. Several on the Captain’s lower legs and arms are third degree so we are evaluating if we need to consider doing a fasciotomy of those regions-.”

Tony stops her. “A fascio – what?” He squints his eyes. Lordy this proves this isn’t a fucking nightmare. Even he can’t figure out what the hell she’s saying.

“Fasciotomy – it’s a process to extract a portion of the fascia or the thin tissue enclosing his muscles. This relieves the tension on the muscle as the immune system responds and the tissue swells.”

“Jesus,” Tony says and looks up to the ceiling. He needs to keep it together. 

“Should I continue?” she asks and for the first time Tony realizes he didn’t even ask her name. He can’t read the tag; his vision is too blurry.

“Yes, please,” he says even as Rhodey shakes his head. Tony glowers at him and then says to the PA. “Yes, please.”

“We’re checking on all of the burns, cleaning them. We’re also monitoring his heart and his lung function as I said.”

“Shouldn’t the serum take care of all of his injuries?” he asks.

Her smile is caring and tender. “We think so, but at the same time he has widespread injuries and he has been through an ordeal. We’ve found evidence of extensive injury to his mucus cavities, his epidermis, and his ribcage. He hasn’t been properly fed or had enough liquids. So the serum is working overtime and just to give it a boost we are trying our best.”

“Yeah, that’s good.” He tries to agree but it sounds like too much and he just wants to see Steve again. He finds himself staring at his boots, but then he looks up and meets her gaze. “Can I see him?” He notices her name, finally. “Christine, can I see him?”

“The doctor is still taking care of him, but I’ll see if you can sneak in for a minute.”

She pads across the lounge area and walks to the door – the tiles of the floor are polished and gleam in the sunlight coming from the windows. Her shoes make no sound as she disappears. It’s funny the things he notices as he stands there useless and small. He might as well be making tuna fish sandwiches for all the help he was to Steve during this fucking week. He should have seen through it earlier, he should have known. How could he have been so fooled? He has to know.

“Hey, hey, take it easy,” Rhodey says. Tony notices his own fists balled and tense. His shoulders are hunched and his breath is caught in his throat. He’s so close to detonation; he’s a bomb about to go off. “We’ll figure it all out. Whatever it is, we can do this, right?”

Tony swallows down the rage and tries to remain calm. He has a team going to find out what happened and why. He doesn’t need to control it all; he doesn’t need to – protect Steve. The flash of Steve dead at the bottom of the pile of all of his dead team mates. He didn’t try hard enough. He both hates and loves Wanda for that vision. What the hell did it mean? He shivers and Rhodey is suddenly maneuvering him to the couch and he has a cup of hot coffee in his hand before he even has the ability to react to what’s happening. 

Rhodey sits across from him and folds his hands as he leans forward to speak. “I’m going to find out what the team discovered, I’ll coordinate with them. You are to stay here, take care of Steve, and take care of yourself.” He places a hand on Tony’s knee. “Promise me, you’ll take care of yourself.”

Tony tastes the coffee and thinks about how hungry he was during the hell of the past week. He’d been so hungry, but he’s not certain whether or not he ever ate at all. Did he eat? Did he eat any of those tuna fish sandwiches? Or that soup? He made soup too, right? The coffee cup falls, and the clatter of the cup doesn’t jog him or the splash of hot coffee. Rhodey jumps up and gets a towel to clean him up and then somehow directs him to the shower. He spends a long time standing in the stream wondering just what the hell happened and why. They were going on a date, spending quality time alone and then getting to know one another outside of their personas.

They’d gone to lunch, had ice cream in the park, and took a long walk. 

And then everything disappears in his memory except for the shop and the calendar stuck on July 1977. He cups his hands over his face as he stands in the water and weeps. It takes too long for him to finish his shower and Rhodey eventually intervenes and brings him out of the cold spray, towels him off like he’s an infant, and then helps him get dressed.

“Have to admit, you weren’t this bad off after Afghanistan,” Rhodey comments as he helps Tony dress in a hoodie and jeans.

“Maybe it was because I wasn’t helpless then. They fucked with my head and they tortured my boyfriend and I didn’t even fucking know it.” His breath catches in his throat and he looks away from Rhodey even as they move through the suite. “I’m going to go see him now.” It’s been too long; he’s been away from Steve for too long.

“Yeah, I know.” Rhodey has the good sense not to argue with him. 

As he goes to the door, Rhodey stays behind and leans against the arm of the couch with his arms crossed – closed off. “Hey, you know, Pepper and I – we care, right? You know that, right?”

Tony only nods and then leaves the suite. He loves Rhodey and he knows that his friend loves him, but right now he cannot be self-centered and take care of himself. He needs to take care of Steve. He appreciates the level and rational thinking that Rhodey offers but sometimes Tony needs to go off the deep end, sometimes that’s all there is. 

When he gets to the medical bay floor again, he searches for Cho or the Physician Assistant, Christine. Having a medical staff and bay is a strange proposition. It isn’t like they are fully employed doing Avengers medical support at all times. Instead, the medical staff have a full plate of medical research and end up doing health care and emergency care on the side. He needs to check in with the rest of the team soon, but right now he’s interested in what the staff has been up to in their spare time – like taking care of Steve.

He finds Christine standing outside the Intensive Care bay with a tablet in her hands and a stylist, going through Steve’s chart. He doesn’t waste a beat, just walks right up to her, and says, “I’d like to see Steve now.”

She doesn’t jerk or surprise so he suspects he’s being loud, but he has no idea. He hears nothing over the roaring in his ears. He just needs to see Steve, he needs to touch him and hold him and know that this is somehow real. 

Christine agrees and she says, “We’ve been waiting for you and he has been asking about you.” She brings him to the observation room of the ICU. “If you’ll put on the scrubs and the mask.”

“He can’t get an infection, not with the serum.”

“We understand that, but the serum is working overtime considering his condition. Bacteria can still infect the wound and the serum would need to divert resources to fight the infection. Just like a process of the body’s natural immune system, we have to assume that the serum can be overwhelmed.” She retrieves a set of disposable scrubs and hands him a mask and cap. “Please.”

He doesn’t like to be handed things, but he takes these anyhow. “Okay,” he agrees and tries not to let the numbness and fear wash over him. He goes through the motions of putting on the scrubs over his clothes and ends up needing to strip out of his hoodie to his t-shirt because of the bulkiness of it. He puts on the cap, mask, and gloves. He almost balks at the gloves but keeps his mouth closed so he can just get in the damned room already. He can see Steve lying propped up on the bed. He’s a mass of red wounds and welts all over his head, chest and arms. Tony sees they have some gauze over the worse of the burns. 

“We’ve decided to allow the serum to work and won’t be doing a fasciotomy, for now. We have to see how much swelling occurs,” she says and her voice is quiet, almost reserved.

“Okay.” He sounds like a fool but he doesn’t know what else to say or how to express his frustration and his gratitude all at once. She finishes adding the mask and cap as well and then leads him into the room. 

Upon closer inspection Tony sees that Steve is not only bruised, battered, and burned but he’s also suffering from a lack of food. The six days they were gone, Tony doesn’t remember eating but he must have because he hasn’t lost as much weight. Steve has – not dangerous amounts but he has lost weight. The people who held them probably had no idea about Steve’s required caloric intake. As Tony studies Steve, he notes that there are electrodes pasted to his chest to feed the machines around him a constant update on his heart. The blood pressure cuff and pulse ox clip are monitored as well. Steve has his eyes closed but Tony can tell as he approaches that he isn’t sleeping, far from it. He’s in pain. 

“Steve,” Tony says and his voice is muffled by the mask. 

Steve doesn’t even hesitate but opens his eyes immediately. The pain expressed within his eyes tears Tony into pieces; he’s not sure he’ll ever be put back together again. He looks over at Christine at the foot of the bed and asks, “Can I touch him?”

“With a normal burn patient, I would say no, but considering this is Captain America, yes.” She smiles though her eyes are sad.

Tony reaches over to Steve’s right hand and, for the first time, realizes how very injured he is. Scorch marks encircle his wrists and the palms of his hands are covered with gauze. Tony gently picks up his right hand and turns it over to examine the palm. 

“He’s very badly burned on his hands.”

How did he ever help Tony during the break-out? It scares Tony, the doubts rise up but the Steve tries to speak and his words are slurred with pain. “Tony, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m just fine.” But he isn’t and he doesn’t know when he’ll ever be fine again. Steve’s fragility petrifies him more so than the thought of the whole of his existence being a falsehood. For as long as Tony can remember, Steve Rogers aka Captain America has been the cornerstone of strength, and power, and bravery. He got that calendar as a child and he fucking circled July 4th immediately because of his absolute love of Cap. Of course as he grew up and he came to blows with Howard things changed. He might have hated Cap at one time.

But he could never hate Steve Rogers. Not really.

And now Steve is before him, a bruised man looking for that same strength from Tony that he’d once supplied to him. Tony cannot be sure he can live up to the task. “I’m fine, everything is a-okay with me.” He doesn’t confess how he cannot parse reality from make believe.

Steve shifts and that only serves to cause more pain and he hisses as his eyes flutter with the pain. 

“I’m sorry you’re in such pain, Captain Rogers.” Christine checks the intravenous bag and cringes. “We’re using carfentanil which is a damned elephant tranquilizer and it is barely touching the pain. I don’t know if it would be good to up the dosage.” 

Steve only nods and gazes at Tony. “Glad.” He licks his lips. “Glad you’re okay.”

“God, Steve,” Tony quakes and he feels Steve’s hand under his react as if he wants to clutch onto Tony. He’s trying to comfort Tony and that’s just wrong. “No, I’m good. I’m just worried about you.”

“Fine, I’m gonna be fine.” He clenches his teeth.

“Fuck, isn’t there anything more you can do?” Tony says and he regrets the sharpness of his tone. 

He likes her even more when she only has empathy for him and doesn’t take to heart his acidic tone. “I would love to add something to the cocktail of pain killers, but nothing we have works. The serum keeps metabolizing it as fast as we can pump it into him.”

“Don’t worry,” Steve whispers and there’s no strength left in his voice. He closes his eyes to fight off the pain as it surely rises and crests along his nerve endings. Tony doesn’t know what to say, so he chews back his response and tries to remain strong for both of them. 

“I worry all the time about you,” Tony says and the image of Steve dying comes to mind and doesn’t he have Wanda to thank for that. He curses inwardly. Steve has been one of Wanda’s biggest advocates, even if Tony stays clear of her. He thinks she’s a weapon of mass destruction – and he should know – he used to be in the business. What she gave him, how she manipulated his fears was – if he admits it – both a blessing and a curse. It showed him his deepest terrors but it also demonstrated to him how very important Steve would become in his life. “All the time.”

He leans down and lightly touches Steve’s face. There are burns there, but they are not as severe. A few cuts and bruises disfigure his beautiful face, but they are already healing. “I want you to know how important you are to me.”

“I know,” Steve says and tries to smile, but there’s too much pain to struggle through in order to make the gesture genuine. 

“Don’t, you don’t have to. I’m going to stay right here. Why don’t you try and sleep?”

He tries to nod but it only produces more pain. Instead, he murmurs, “Okay. Don’t, don’t go far?”

“Never,” Tony says and feels the tremor in Steve’s hand as he tries to pretend the agony afflicting his body is nothing, nothing at all. It kills pieces of Tony. Pieces of him are falling away, disappearing. How can he do this? How can he handle what has been done to them, to both of them. How many times did Steve have to suffer the same wakening nightmare while also being tortured? “I’m right here.”

It takes too long for Steve to settle, but finally he manages to drift off to sleep. Tony thinks the only reason he does is because of pure exhaustion. Christine thinks differently. “You helped him.” She pulls off her mask and cap as they stand in the outer observation room.

Staring at Steve through the window, Tony frowns and shakes his head. “I don’t think so. He’s in so much pain. I don’t even think I should leave. He’s bound to wake up again, soon.”

“Nurse Kashena will watch him.” Christine indicates the woman sitting at the small desk with a laptop and tablet. “He’s her patient and she’s excellent. She’ll make sure he’s comfortable.”

Kashena gives Tony a big smile and nods in agreement. “Don’t worry, Mister Stark, Captain Rogers is our priority. I am glued to this seat and won’t leave him alone.”

“I shouldn’t leave him alone.” 

“You need to,” Rhodey says as he enters the small observation room. “The team just called in to report. It looks like a lot of the place was cleaned out when you left. But they were able to pick up some stragglers and some of the data files.”

“Data files?”

“Yes. Sam says it looks like they recorded everything, including what they did to Steve.”

“Jesus,” Tony says and feels lightheaded enough that he flings his hand out to steady himself against the wall. Christine reaches out to him.

“Are you okay, Mister Stark?”

He looks at Steve. “No, no I’m not.” He doesn’t know if he ever will be. 

Rhodey comes to his side and says, “Hey, you don’t have to do this right now. You can go back in there and sit with him.”

He feels like a ton of bricks sits on his chest. The weight of all the possibilities and uncertainties presses down on him and constricts his breathing. He tries to fight it off. He twists his mouth downward. He has to be courageous, for Steve. “What do they need me for?”

“First to get checked up, then to eat, and when the team arrives to look at the data files.”

He wants to object, but he knows eventually, even he needs to break down and allow the inevitable to occur. He nods and stuffs the tips of his fingers into his jean pockets. Christine hands Rhodey his hoodie and then says, “I’ll stay here and keep an eye on him too, Mister Stark.”

He starts away but then looks back at Christine and Kashena. “It’s Tony. Just Tony.”

They both smile at him. He tries to take it inside; he tries to let the kindness grow, but all he feels is this growing cold that turns into a numbness that somehow is even colder. Again, he lets Rhodey steer him through the medical bay and finds himself being examined by one of their doctors. He really needs to talk to Cho and find out how extensive the internal injuries that Steve has – because he’s sure in his own mental shock he missed a helluva lot of information over the last few hours.

“You need to eat,” Rhodey says as the doctor finishes up.

“Yes, I think a few square meals will do you good. You’re also dehydrated and I’d bet in need of a good night’s sleep.” The doctor taps on his tablet. “I’d like you to take it easy for a few days and I am recommending a psych eval.”

“I don’t need a psych eval, everyone knows I’m crazy already,” Tony says. He’s sitting on another gurney and tired to his bones. Rhodey gives him his hoodie and he tugs it on, figuring the doctor must be finished and he really doesn’t give a shit anymore. All he wants is to sit next to Steve and hold on, tight. 

“You’re crashing now,” the doctor says. “Exhaustion. You need sleep but first food.”

“I’ll see to it that he eats,” Rhodey says.

“Great, make sure he sleeps, too.” The doctor excuses himself and then Tony is left in a fog of trying to figure out what his next step is. His feels like his brain has melted into goo. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and the bright lights flash and spark under his lids. He exhales and tries to find some way back to sanity.

“Do you want to get something to eat?” Rhodey asks. His voice is low and quiet.

“As long as it’s not tuna fish.” Tony drops his hands. 

When he eats it tastes like cardboard and he idly wonders what the hell he ate for six days. Images – light and fleeting – drift through his brain. A blurred memory of being hoisted into a sitting position and then someone wrenching his mouth open to pour something foul and disgusting tasting down his throat. He spat it up more times than not, but they’d put three guys to force feed and an image of the green fucker warning him comes to mind.

“Drink it or watch him burn, either one. Your choice.” And then Tony would look up and see them hurt Steve. How the hell is that for dinner entertaimment.

Tony lays his spoon on the table as Rhodey watches him. He can’t eat anymore of the soup – at least he ate half of the sandwich (and it wasn’t fucking tuna fish). The images overlay onto his present and he sees Steve hanging from pipes by chains. He’s dripping wet and one of the fuckers has a live wire. Tony squints at the memory and then it moves and Steve’s screaming arching backward as the live wire hits his soaking wet body.

“Damn.” He brings shaking hands up to his face. He would have given anything to change places with Steve, anything at all. Why did they just use him as an accessory? He could have offered, he could have done more for them. He would have sold his damned soul for Steve, to save Steve. And that’s just it. They knew it, too. After they got what they needed, green monster had said he wanted Tony for his brain, that he needed Tony to do his dirty work so they needed to keep Tony healthy to a degree. Steve ended up the target and the liability all at the same time. He was needed for his exposure to the raw Tesseract, while at the same time he was being used as a way to keep Tony docile. 

Rhodey doesn’t say a thing, only places his hand on Tony’s shoulder as they sit in the dining area of the Avenger’s facility. Tony cannot look up and see those memories again. But they haunt him anyhow, they hunt him like he’s a deer in the woods and there are guns after him readying to spray him with explosive images. He shivers.

Now Rhodey reacts and says, “You want to go up to your bedroom, try and sleep a little?”

At first, Tony is going to deny that he needs any sleep at all. For pity’s sake he’s not sure how much sleep he got over the last six days but it was enough. Yet, if he could get a little time to himself, he might be able to piece himself back together – fight this unending hopelessness and feel like he can function enough to help Steve. So he nods to Rhodey’s suggestion and the next thing he knows they are climbing the stairs to Steve’s room. He doesn’t even think about going to his own room. When Rhodey walks into the bedroom behind him, Tony holds up his hand. “I’m just going to sleep. You don’t need to be here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Please I need to just forget for a bit.”

Rhodey weighs his words and then with hands on his hips and a deflated expression he gives in. “I’m going to go check out what the team found. When you’re up to it, come by the war room and we can debrief.”

Rhodey says things like that – military things that still caused Tony to flinch, but he holds his expression frozen and agrees to stop by once he is rested. Rhodey leaves and Tony falls onto the bed. He’s not going to sleep, he already knows that. He needs to go back to Steve. So he waits a bit for Rhodey to clear out and then he makes his way back to the medical ward. He slips into the ICU and acknowledges Kashena with a grateful wave. He puts on the scrubs, mask, and cap and then enters into Steve’s room. Sliding a chair to the side of the bed as soundlessly as he can, he settles down in it and waits. There’s something powerful and profound about sitting vigil. He won’t leave Steve, not now, not ever.

To the sounds of the monitors and the hiss of the pressure cuff, he falls asleep. The dreams are not welcome, nor are they soothing, but they are illuminating. Whatever drugs they used on Tony, the effects dissipate and he remembers. Standing next to Steve in the park, thinking how nice it is just to be near him, to see him – it all comes back. The sheepishly shy smile and the silly almost jock like way he tries to hide it. He can see the scrawny ninety pound Steve Rogers underneath all of the wrappings and he thinks he loves that most of all. Only a month, and he’s fallen so deeply that he thinks he’s drowning, but he recalls thinking that if this is drowning he would happily breathe in the water. 

They drugged him, though and everything tumbled away into that strange scenario. In his lucid moments, Tony recalls not only the chair, but the pipes. How they hung Steve from the pipes and shocked him, whipped him with something akin to what Vanko used all those years ago on the racetrack. It left charred marks up and down Steve’s body. But how did they overpower him completely? He doesn’t know. He wakes up with a jolt and finds that he’s not the only one with Steve.

Thor is standing over his bed, his hand slipped under Steve’s head, and he has a flask to his lips. Tony jerks fully awake and stands up. Thor isn’t even in scrubs – he’s still in his Shakespearean getup and Mjolnir is propped up against the bed. Steve has tears on his face and Tony rushes to his side.

Tearing his mask off, he snaps, “What the hell are you giving him?”

Thor considers him but there are ages of wisdom, knowledge, and foolhardiness behind those eyes. He continues to help Steve drink from the flask. “Something for the pain.”

“Something fo-.” Tony looks down at Steve and though there are tears staining his face, he looks grateful and more relaxed than he did before – even in his sleep he had looked tormented. “It’s working?”

“It is a powerful medicine. I have often used it for battle wounds in my youth,” Thor says and then pulls the flask away. Steve paws at Thor for more and he thins his lips and disagrees. “Too much and you will float away onto the wings of the Valkyrie.”

Tony leans in and takes Steve’s injured hand in his own, he’s gentle and careful in his touch. “Is it better? Any better?”

“Yeah, Tony, good. Feel good.” He giggles a little.

Tony furrows his brows and then glares at Thor. “Is he – did you give him – is he drunk?”

“It is a powerful medicine and a great mead.”

Tony screws up his face, but doesn’t reprimand Thor. His concern centers on Steve – what adding alien alcohol will do to his healing and the serum. He can see that Steve’s more relaxed not hyper aware, not pained. A flash of Steve’s body arching and rigid against the electrical shocks startles him. The suppression of his memories of his real life are just starting to filter back, and he fears what will be when they re-integrate and replace the falsehoods he’s lived the past few days. 

“Tony,” Steve murmurs and his tone is wistful and sweet.

“You should rest,” Tony says and Thor silently agrees.

“Just want to make sure you’re okay?” Steve flinches as he lifts his hand, a hand that is still ravaged by wounds. It’s only been hours but Tony feels like he’s lived years. 

“I’m fine, you’re going to be,” he promises and it feels empty and open like a festering wound and then he scans Steve’s body and see the seeping wounds that are healing but much more slower than he thought. “Maybe you shouldn’t give him anymore mead.”

“Mead?” 

Tony turns to find Helen Cho entering the ICU. A look of reprimand crosses her face but she bites it back. “So not only have we dismissed my protocols as far as infection and safety are concerned but your feeding my patient mead?”

Tony raises his hands but realizes he’s taken off the mask and he never put on any gloves. Shit. He’s screwed. He only points at Thor. It would be comical but Steve’s suffering and every little while he releases a pent up breath with a slight whimper underlying it. “Doctor Cho.”

She fixates on Steve’s chart in the tablet in her hands and then shoves Thor out of the way. Even as she goes Tony can see her hand lingers on his bicep. He almost says something, almost, but then he chews back his own words to focus on the important stuff. 

“I only intended to help ease his suffering,” Thor says.

“Well, easing his suffering is something I’m all for, but we also have to consider the other effects of alcohol on his system. I will up the intravenous feed to ensure he doesn’t dehydrate. That’s important as the tissues regenerate.” Putting the tablet on the side table, she turns her attention to Steve and bends down to speak to him. “Captain Rogers, can you tell me how much pain you’re in on a scale from one to ten. With ten being the worst?”

Steve looks at Tony for support and for reference. Tony says, “Oh no you don’t. You have to answer her even though you are the king of denial and stoicism.” He holds up two fingers. “The double whammy.”

Steve tries to smile but the misery in his eyes belies the gesture. Tony strokes his hair and thinks about how things only just started when they were taken. Only six days and the rest feels like silence. The anxiety, the dread is only just under the surface waiting for him. 

“Eight,” Steve finally says. “But the mead is helping?” 

“Is that a question or a statement?” Cho doesn’t let him answer. “I want to check your dressings. Mister Stark, Thor, could you please leave us for a few minutes?”

Tony notices how she elongated Thor’s name but doesn’t comment, instead they both shuffle out of the room. He stands at the window, watching as Cho tenderly touches Steve and examines him. He tries not to hear his subtle moans as she assesses his condition. Tony’s aware of Thor waiting, that he picked up his hammer and seethes in the corner of the observation room as if he’s about to bring the lightning to scorch the Earth itself in retribution.

In order to distract him or maybe to fan the flames, Tony asks, “You were with them? Did you go with the team?” Thor is not officially part of the Avengers team anymore. He’s off Earth more than he’s on it especially since he seems to be a distant from Jane these days. 

“Yes,” Thor says. “We did not find many of the perpetrators left. A few that were collected and brought to a military holding cell. The Black Widow said she will handle their interrogation. The data that was discovered concerns me. They were after the Tesseract, or they were trying to, at the very least, harness its power from afar. I did not know it would be possible to do such a thing.”

“They said that Steve had been exposed to it, as a raw power?” Tony says and then realizes that might have been part of the dream. 

Thor tilts his head in thought. “While this is not my area of expertise, I could only hazard a guess that our good Captain was exposed to the Tesseract in its most unbridled form.”

“I don’t know the particulars but I do know that when Steve talks about what happened to the Red Skull, well, he said that the Red Skull grabbed the cube in his hand and the whole universe appeared before them.” Tony turns to the window to watch Cho and Steve who seems to be slowly falling back to sleep.

“If the Tesseract was active touching it would lead to an exposure of its raw power. I would think but it might be best to consult Selvig on this point,” Thor says and then steps away. Before he leaves he says, “Take care of our good Captain while I am away.” Tony nods in promise and then with a sweep of his cape, Thor leaves the room.

The observation room or Steve’s hospital room become Tony’s second home over the course of the next days. He sleeps in a chair in the observation room, eats there as well even when friends including Rhodey and Pepper who flew in just to check on him, beg him to leave. He cannot. According to the doctors on top of the burns, Steve also has to deal with the after effects of the beatings he received. On top of the electrical burns and the whippings, apparently he has several broken ribs that mended and then were broken again. He also has several fractures in his right hand which confuse the doctors but Steve only says it is from their escape. Tony feels like a shit when he hears that – he never even realized that Steve hurt himself further. 

The healing goes well, until it doesn’t. Tony’s busy arguing with Steve that he needs to stay with him and that 24 hours a day 7 days a week is not obsessive, it’s caring. Steve’s sitting up in the bed but he’s also still looks like hamburger over much of his chest and arms even after three days of healing. Even with the mead, Steve whimpers in his sleep. He’s just awoken and Tony’s trying to feed him and get him to understand that it’s okay to be taken care of once in a while. 

“Just let me do this for you,” Tony says and scoops up some of the soup. 

“I’m not an invalid, Tony,” Steve says but his weakness betrays his wounds. He can barely lift his head from the pillow. His hands fumble for the spoon, and he often shivers from the cold. Doctor Cho reported to him that many burn victims have difficulty regulating their temperature. 

“You can’t hold the spoon, and you need the nutrition. Cho is eating nails because the serum isn’t at full speed ahead.” Tony manages to get one spoonful into Steve. As he looks down, at the tray between them he tries to remember if they ever fed Steve – he has no memory of it. “Just let me do this, I didn’t help you much at all.”

“Tony, it’s not your fault,” Steve says but dutifully opens his mouth for another serving of the hearty beef soup. 

“You remember, don’t you?”

Steve swallows and then swallows again with nothing in his mouth. His eyes are liquid, filled with remorse, regret, and despair. “Don’t do this, Tony. Don’t.”

“You remember.” Tony hates himself a little more. Every day a little bit of what happened comes back to him, not the fake montages but the real moments that bleed into one another and rip away at his sanity. 

Tony’s memories are laced with uncertainties because of the drugs they obviously used on him as well. Most of the time, they threw Tony in the storage room by himself at night. Most of the time he was bound. Most of the time it was dark. A few times, a few awful times, they’d thrown Steve into the room as well. Hours later, they’d dump Steve into the room. Tony couldn’t hold him or touch him. He’d been fucking lucky the last time because they hadn’t cuffed his hands. The few times Steve joined him in the storage room he’d been barely conscious and he was racked with pain. He tried to swallow it down when he was aware enough to realize Tony had sidled up against him to try and give some comfort. 

But he thinks the comfort he could give was lacking at best. “I need to know, I need to remember.”

Steve rarely shows his anger or frustration. This is not one of those moments. “You don’t, you don’t need to know anything. At all.”

Steve isn’t the only one who gets angry. Tony cannot stop it; the stress churns and he fails to calm it. “Why? What the hell did I do? It was my fault wasn’t it? I’m the one that put us in danger. You had to give in because they threatened me, right? Right?”

“Tony, no,” Steve says and lays back against the pillows. He’s weak, but not willing to give in – when is he? “Just stop. This isn’t how we operate. We work together, as a team.”

“But I didn’t, did I? I left you to deal with those bastards while I was in LaLa land,” Tony snaps and he shouldn’t. For God’s sake, Steve just went through hell and now Tony’s focusing on himself – again. What the fuck is wrong with him? He drops everything ,every pretense, every molecule of self-respect and restraint. “Just tell me what the hell happened, because if you don’t I swear, I’ll-.” He doesn’t have a finish to that sentence – it just hangs there like a warning, like an alarm.

Steve isn’t a fool even when he’s in tremendous pain. “You’ll what, Tony? What? What is it that you’ll do to yourself? Or to the people who did this to us? And it is us. Don’t believe it is anything else but us. You went through – as you might call it – a mind fuck while they – they.” He stops because he can’t admit what they did to him.

“While they tortured you, say it,” Tony says and the tears come unbidden to his eyes. A strange dichotomy of emotion hits Tony – the unshakable fear and sorrow juxtaposed with an unending rage at their captors and himself.

“Yes, okay, is that what you need?” Steve says and his chest heaves as if it is hard to breathe, as if the air has been stolen from his lungs. “Is that what you want me to say? Okay, fine. They tortured me. They whipped me. They used electric shock and they even broke my bones.” He’s rasping now, gasping for air. “Every bit of my energy, every bit of it had to go to reaching out to you through the link. That and distracting them from getting a connection to the Tesseract. More than anything it burned me, more than the electrical shocks. I felt charred and like I’d turned to ash. Is that what you need to hear? Does that make you feel better? Does it?” He’s stuttering through the words as he grapples for breath and Tony feels all the more like shit.

“I want you to know--.” He starts.

“No, Tony, I don’t need to know a damned thing,” Steve says and his hands are wobbling as he pushes the food tray away. “I really don’t need to know a damned thing. All I want is for you to understand that I did it, I did it for love. Not for anything else.”

“L-love?” Tony says and he’s thrilled, excited, and somehow feels as if he’s been smacked in the face with sobriety after a binge. He should be celebrating but all it does is emphasize how very much out of his depth he is. 

“Yeah,” Steve says in a whisper that fights for air. “Yeah, I love you.” He looks up at Tony expectantly, and Tony – Tony says nothing, returns nothing for long minutes. Maybe he’s in shock, maybe he’s an ass. When the minutes stretch out, Steve’s lips part but he only issues a small _oh_ and then presses back into the pillows. Even the push back hurts him because he winces and tries to cover it up. “That’s okay, Tony, I understand. We’ve only been going out for a month, and it’s silly for us, for me to think you would already feel the same way. Considering. Considering you’ve already been through so much.”

Steve has a way of doing that – lessening his own experiences in comparison to those around him. But Tony doesn’t disagree – he’s still trying to force his mouth to work. All he can think about is the idea that –for Tony – loving Steve wasn’t enough. When will anything ever be enough?

Tony feels like a shit now more than ever and when he looks up from staring at his useless hands, hands that didn’t protect Steve, he sees even more torment etched on Steve’s face. He’s pale and waning and Tony feels worse. “Steve? Steve?”

He only bites at his lip and shakes his head, trying to deny that he’s suffering – again. 

“Damn it, Steve, what is it?” It comes out too harsh, like a demand against annoyance. 

“Nothing, nothing.” 

But Tony sees the furrow between his brows that concentrated look he’s come to associate with agony built on misery. It’s something beyond the emotional distress; it’s physical. “Steve, what’s going on?”

“I just,” Steve says and swallows down the rest as he closes his eyes and tries to ride out the pain. 

At this point, all the frustration melts away as Tony rolls the tray table with the food on it away. He lays a hand on Steve’s shoulder, being attentive and careful of the wounds. With the other hand, he soothes Steve’s hair from his face and says, “Tell me what I can do?”

Steve only chews at his lips and does not respond. Tony tries to get Steve to breathe through the pain, slowly talking him through it until he’s at least quieted and in a fitful sleep. This is all Tony’s fault. He shouldn’t have pressed him; it only got Steve agitated and ended up amplifying his suffering. Tony leaves Steve’s side only when he’s sure that Steve won’t be surfacing from sleep. As he exits the room he finds Helen Cho studying Steve’s medical file.

He doesn’t want to test her, but he does anyhow. “He’s in too much pain. Your staff, the staff for the Avengers should have been researching ways to alleviate his pain already. This shouldn’t be something that you’re trying to figure out on the fly. It’s one of the reasons I pay you the big bucks.”

Cho considers him, her eyes steely in their resolve. “Captain Rogers’ metabolism is complex, even more so than Doctor Banner’s.” This surprises him and she goes on to explain. “Captain Rogers teeters on the edge of being the good person he is and the opposite. Just a fraction and he spills over-.”

“That’s ridiculous, Steve’s good through and through.”

She raises a hand from the tablet and then says, “I agree. By far, Captain Rogers is good, but the biochemistry of good as we know it also flirts with bad. There’s no way to stop the flight or fight response, except with the most outstanding person. Doctor Banner’s chemistry betrays him and the way he modifies it is through meditation, something that very simply comes naturally to Captain Rogers. He doesn’t meditate because he doesn’t need to – it is simply his nature. So figuring out the fine details of how he’s able to operate and control that flight or fight response that could lead to aggressive tendencies is key. It is also key to how the metabolism works as a whole and how to control his pain. Because of the intricacies and the fact that Doctor Banner isn’t here anymore, we’re slow in our progress but we are making progress.”

He realizes that’s defensive ball on her part and he’s willing to except it. “It’s been days, it seems like he’s still in a shit ton of pain.”

“That’s because of the wounds, the burns are in need of debridement.”

“Debridement?” Tony heard stories about debridement, how painful a process it is, how many times a burn victim would have to go through such a procedure is horrifying. “No, no that’s not good.”

“We were hoping that with the serum in play that debridement wouldn’t be something that the Captain would have to endure especially with his unique characteristics. But unfortunately the serum is working against Captain Rogers. As fast as it is healing him the dead and burn areas are literally involuting, folding into the skin and then are healed over. The only way to stop this from happening so we don’t have to cut it out is through debridement.”

“You can’t. That’s inhumane.” Without painkillers, the debridement process will only be agony for Steve. “Hasn’t he endured enough?” That last he murmurs to himself, thinking that Cho couldn’t have heard him, but she touches his arm.

“I know. I know.”

It’s all he can do to not want to scream as she moves off to speak with her physician assistant and her nurse. Tony stands there, staring into the room where Steve sleeps, a disturbed and restless slumber. He clenches his fists. How could he have let this happen to someone he loves, how could he not say he loves Steve to his face. He’s a fucking moron sometimes.

As he stands there contemplating his moronhood, Natasha appears in the doorway. Her expression aches of exhaustion, but she zeroes in on him and says, “We should probably all discuss the findings from the lab. You might want to hear this.”

For days, he’s been avoiding anything to do with their collection of data, but he supposes he needs to toughen up and just go and fucking do it. He opens his hands, splays them for a moment, and then rubs them down his pants. Sighing, he nods. “Okay, lead away.”

She regards him with that critical eye that reminds him more of a feline than any multiple eyed spider. She lets it go and he’s grateful. At least he doesn’t have to go into the shit hell that’s he dealt with again. Except of course he does when they get to the briefing room and there’s a gaggle of people waiting for them.

Rhodey and Sam are there as are Wanda, Vision, Clint (he retired why is he here) and then there’s Secretary Ross. Who invited the ass? Everyone’s seated at the table and Tony decides to plop down on a couch behind the group. He doesn’t have the mental capability right now. Rhodey meets his gaze but doesn’t say anything. At least the team knows how to read him.

“We have a real problem,” Ross says and Tony frowns. Why is he running the meeting? “Over the course of the last few years the Avengers have been involved in serious situations where the matter of world security has been vital. From the Chitauri incident, to SHIELD, and finally to Ultron.”

“My fault,” Tony says.

Ross gives him a withering look. “We know.”

Tony clamps his mouth shut. It was hard enough to not be put in prison for that one. So he sits back and covers his face with his arm. He doesn’t really want to be here anyhow. He should be at Steve’s side, maybe reading to him or holding his hand, or soothing him somehow. He shouldn’t be here. 

“What happened recently,” Ross says and he nods to his assistant who is standing to the side. The assistant taps on a tablet and the large screen comes to life in front of the briefing table. The plant where Tony and Steve was held resolves, and then the laboratory is shown as well as the chairs. Tony looks away wishing he hadn’t taken his hands away from his face. “Shows a new level of danger that we could not have foreseen but maybe, we should have predicted. Enhanced individuals, modified by science or by skill or by artificial devices put not only the world in danger but themselves as well.”

“What?” Tony straightens from his slumped position.

“The cost of rescue in the dollars was extreme-.”

“You did not rescue us, we rescued ourselves and exposed the possibilities of what that freak and his friends were doing.”

“The cost of clean up-.”

“It didn’t matter one way or the other if we were involved, they planned on doing something with that plant,” Tony says. “If you’re implying-.”

“I am not implying, I am stating that enhanced individuals put the world at risk, look at the Chitauri and the cost of that fiasco-.”

“We saved your asses,” Tony retorts as Natasha and Clint chime in as well. 

“The military barely showed up.”

“You didn’t even know how to protect us against that mind thing,” Clint adds.

“You wanted to blow the largest city in the US to smithereens with a nuke,” Tony says. “Whatever you’re implying, whatever you’re saying.”

“I’m saying that you all need to be controlled,” Ross says, his face turning beet red. “The Hulk where is he?” He glowers at Tony. “Not in prison where he should be. Paying the price for the damage he’s done.”

Natasha stands up, blocking Tony’s view of Ross. “Protection sometimes costs lives. It isn’t something we want and we do try our best to preserve lives. This isn’t a game.”

“No, it’s not,” Ross says. “Your kind of protection is something we neither asked for nor need.”

“Okay, next time Hydra infiltrates the world governments, or an alien – like the fucking green one that held Captain America and tortured him – come down and try and conquer the world – well, sure we’ll take care of our own,” Tony says as he gets up so he can see Ross more directly. “But you better damn well be sure you’ll have to come begging on your knees for our help.”

“Tony,” Rhodey says and shakes his head.

“Colonel?” Ross turns to him. “This is not a sanctioned military operation. You have twenty-four hours to decide where your loyalties lie.”

“So, this is what you wanted?” Tony asks. “This is where you’re going with this? Break up the Avengers? Because you’re what? Afraid? Or is it something else?” Tony tilts his head and studies Ross. 

“I don’t know what you mean, Stark,” Ross says.

For a long moment the beats of the time pound in Tony’s head. He listens, he counts and then he says, “I think you can leave now.”

“You’re wrong to do this – you can’t-.”

“Can’t I? I saved President Ellis, that was me and Rhodey. So you can be damned sure I will do what I think is right. The Avengers are here to save the damned world. We’ve done it multiple times and we will do it again.”

“You’ve been hanging out with that damned Captain again,” Ross snarls. He turns to Rhodey. “You can resign your commission and be part of a vigilante group or you can keep your honor and walk away from this.”

Rhodey stands up and glances around the room. His eyes fall on Sam’s before he switches to Tony’s gaze. Turning to Ross, Rhodey says, “Sir, I will always do what is best for my country and what will protect this world. Right now, with the idea of Hydra still out there, I think I will stay where I will have the best option to fight and secure America and the world from these threats.”

Ross narrows his eyes and waits for Rhodey’s final answer.

“I am staying with the Avengers.”

Sam slaps his knee and Natasha cannot suppress her smile. 

“You’ve made a mistake. You’ve all made a damned mistake,” Ross says and then he motions to his assistant. They leave without another word.

After he departs, Tony goes back to the group gathered at the table. “Just what the hell was that?”

“A scout.”

Natasha folds her arms over her chest and nods in agreement with Sam. “Sam’s right. Whatever Ross was here doing, it was to find out how strengths and weaknesses – where he could pull the team apart.”

“And we showed him, it isn’t happening,” Clint says. Which is ironic considering Hawkeye supposedly retired. 

“What’s even more important is this,” Natasha says and brings up a surveillance video. The screen shows the plant where Steve and Tony were held and to the side a number of black SUVs in the parking lot. 

“What is this?” Wanda says and sits up.

“This is the surveillance video from the security footage of the parking lot,” Natasha says. “While we were on our way to the site, what you see is the evacuation. Look here.”

She zooms in on the feed and then has Friday adjust the resolution and clean it up. Before them is the alien – the one that tortured them for days. As they watch the alien changes form and both Wanda and Clint jerk in their chairs. Vision only watches with a singular concentration. The alien shifts to become a non-descript human. The humans around him don’t react at all. Once they get into the vehicles, the SUVs drive down the main road out of the plant complex. 

“Where did they go?” Tony asks.

“We got a partial plate and we’re tracking it now.” 

Tony steps back then and watches the Avengers get to work. It’s true that he’s spent a lot of time off the team, working in the background instead of up front and center. It’s been that way since Ultron. While Tony still does have the armor and does go on the occasional mission, he’s left most of the work to the professionals as he calls them. Except for Wanda and Vision, most of the rest of the team have been trained to be part of a force, most of the rest of the team knows how to do what they do with some amount of military type training, even Thor – though he skirts the outside border of acceptability. 

What Ross wants to do – he wants to wrangle the Avengers to be under his guidance and Tony’s not stupid, he knows what Ross did to Bruce – everyone on the team knows how that went. Tony knows to be hypervigilant when it comes to Ross. While some of his arguments might play well, his true motives are still under wraps. Tony could stay, analyze the data, and work it out with the rest of the team, and there’s a part of him that wants to do nothing more than that – yet, there’s another part.

He listens to the other part. As the group huddles over the center table talking about strategies and figuring out the best way to pick apart what Ross’ plans are in conjunction with the abduction, Tony knocks the table and, as they all look up at him, says, “I think I’m going to excuse myself. Go back to the medical bay.”

“Are you sure?” Rhodey asks.

He looks over the team – Steve’s team – Captain America’s team and he trusts that they know best. They come from all different backgrounds and understand the needs and safety of the world from threats both internal and external. “Yeah, I’m sure. Go get ‘em and make sure they get what’s coming to them.”

He nods and spins on his heel to leave. Sam jogs after him down the hallway and catches his arm. “Hey.”

Tony stops. “Yeah?”

“That, with Ross, it could have gone all different ways.”

Tony considers his words and then smiles and says, “No, it couldn’t.” He knows where his family stands. “Ross, we all know, has some questionable motives.”

“Yeah, but still. You stood up for Rhodes, and the team,” Sam says. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me, prove that Ross has something hidden up his sleeves because I can tell you – he’s a force. If we can’t prove it, then we’ll end up under his thumb.”

Sam presses his mouth into a thin line and crosses his arms. “Yeah, you’re right.” He lifts his chin. “Tell Steve we got this.”

Tony smiles. It feels good to smile, to know his team, his family has his back. “I will.”

Sam only hesitates a second, but then he leaves to go and join the team. 

“Go kick some ass,” Tony yells after him and Sam only smiles as he enters the briefing room again. 

It isn’t that Tony is abandoning the team. He knows that they have a long road ahead of them. The alien and how far that thing and its like can infiltrate is disturbing, but he trusts his team. They are going to find a way forward and that’s what the Avengers are about – sooner or later they will succeed, but right now, he has to focus on what he needs to do for Steve. 

Getting Steve better isn’t the easiest thing and it ends up that he does need the debridement procedure. On the day they decide to do it so that he can finish healing properly, Tony dresses in scrubs alongside the medical team. It is going to be a painful and horrific procedure, but Tony isn’t going to let Steve go through it alone. Steve has been somewhat reserved and quiet throughout the preparations. 

Tony joins the team in the surgical suite as Steve lies on the gurney while the medical team sets up the drapes for the work. He’s arguing with them that he doesn’t need it, and Cho looks at Tony for help. He steps up to the side of the table and places a gloved hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Shush, now. They need to do this.”

“I know that,” Steve says and his tone is uncharacteristically short and annoyed. 

Tony arches a brow at him and says, “You’re getting feisty.”

“I’m getting frustrated,” Steve mutters and shifts on the gurney. “It’s been days I should be healed.”

“You will be – this is just a setback. Welcome to the real world of medical care that the rest of us have to deal with,” Tony says with smile. He’s trying to keep the mood light- he spent some time reading up on debridement and it scares the crap out of him. 

“Yeah, fun, fun,” Steve says and grimaces. He waits a minute before he says, “I know what’s going to happen, Tony, you don’t have to look like I’m going to the firing squad.”

“Fuck a duck, don’t say it like that,” Tony says and his stomach turns over again. “I’m trying to be here for you.”

“You are, you are,” Steve says as they ask him to lay down. He follows the directions. “You would for any of the team.”

“Not just any of the-.” Tony swallows the rest because Steve had admitting to loving him. Tony didn’t return the favor, even though he god damned loves the man to the marrow of his bones. What the hell is wrong with him? “I’m doing it for you.” Tears prickle in his eyes but he doesn’t elaborate. He feels like a loser, like a failure. 

Steve keeps his eyes focused on the middle distance as he doesn’t turn to face Tony. He frowns and then nods. “I know.”

He wanted something more – Tony knows it and he wants to say it but the scurry and hustle around him as the medical staff prepares for the procedure just isn’t conducive to devotions about unending love. He wants it to be right and perfect and – and he’s a damned coward. 

Cho walks up to stand next to Tony. She smiles down at Steve and says, “We’re going to start now. It won’t be comfortable and we may need to take some breaks. Are you ready?”

Tony peers around the room; they’ve started some intravenous lines to feed Steve the heaviest pain killers that they have available. He considers whether or not it might be a good idea to go and get some of that Asgardian mean. He’s sure Thor would have left some around before he went off world again.

“Yes,” Steve is saying. “I’d rather you finish it all in one go, if possible.”

She lifts a shoulder and says, “We’ll see. I hate to have you under too much pressure and pain.”

Cho moves around the draped curtain and one of the nurses adjusts the light. “We’re going to do the debridement with several different techniques. The most invasive will be the surgical removal of the dead tissue. Unfortunately, you healed over the tissue and we need to clean it out so that you don’t have functional issues. We will also use some ointments on the lesser degree burns to clean them as well. It will be uncomfortable and please tell us when you need a break.”

Steve chews on his lips and nods. Tony looks at Cho and says, “He’s ready.” The heart monitor clicks up a beat and Tony rests his hand on Steve’s head, the cap over it preventing him from stroking and calming him. Steve glances over at Tony and there’s a far off look to his expression.

“Pretty sure that fake world technology would be a good thing right now,” Steve says and his words are a little strangled as Cho begins.

Cho talks through the procedure. “I’m using a laser to ablate as much as I can, but it can cause more harm than good, so I will be doing much of it the good old fashioned way.” She’s leaning over Steve’s mid-section and Tony doesn’t dare peek over the drape. He knows Steve’s worse burns are on his torso, hands, and legs. 

As Cho begins her work, Steve stays passive, almost tranquil which seems completely out of sorts to Tony. He watches Steve as no emotions play across his face then peers over the drape when Cho cuts deeply into the soft tissue of his belly. Steve swallows but doesn’t react. His jaw muscles twitch but his eyes remain fixed and almost mesmerized. Tony winces as he watches Cho pull out the dead tissue and then clean it away. The nurse and the Physician Assistant, Christine, help her work through each burn. As they proceed, each wound looks fresh but also healthier somehow.

Tony turns back to Steve who hasn’t so much as flinched under the knife. He can’t help himself when he says, “That’s amazing.”

“What?” Steve says and doesn’t look at Tony.

“You’re not even reacting to it. It’s like it doesn’t affect you at all.”

That’s when Steve focuses on him and that’s when Tony sees the pain clearly, immediately, and intimately in his expression. “That’s what you think? That it doesn’t affect me when people hu-.” He stops and now has to close his eyes due to the pain. Every muscle tenses and he grunts low in his throat before he continues. “When people hurt me, it affects me Tony. I assure you.” He clenches his teeth and rides out the pain again.

“A little more here,” the doctor says and Steve turns his head away from Tony and squeezes his eyes shut. He does groan this time and flinches as Cho works. She works for long minutes on his abdomen and chest, all the while Steve tries to mute his pain and it digs into Tony just like Cho’s wicked knife along Steve’s chest. Eventually as Cho moves on and Christine rubs in the ointment, Steve breaks down and starts to cry silent tears. The tears come in streams as the doctor moves to his hands and legs. 

Tony keeps his hands on Steve as much as he can. He cradles his head with his hands and tries not to swear as the agony grows and all Tony can think about is the chair and Steve’s silent screams while being electrocuted. Steve freezes for a moment as the cutting goes deep along his thigh muscles and then opens his mouth, but tries to stifle his reaction. 

“Oh, sweetheart,” Tony says and the tears are flowing freely on his own face. He should have known better than to state anything about hiding the pain. “Sweetheart, I’m here, I’m here.”

Steve faces Tony and there’s such a look of loss and bewilderment as if he doesn’t expect Tony to be there. There’s a despondency in his eyes that only serves to devour any hope left that Tony holds. He leans forward and gently kisses Steve’s forehead, his temple, his eyes, his lips. “I’m here, just focus on my voice, okay?”

Steve only groans in reply. The procedure lengthens and Steve goes through rounds of panting and holding his breath, and simply shivering with the pain. Tony does the best he can, keeping his hands on Steve, trying to distract him, trying desperately show Steve what he cannot say. 

As the procedure wears on, Cho asks, “Do you need to take a break?”

“Yes,” Tony says but at the same time Steve says, “No, no, just get it over with.”

There’s sweat on his upper lip and along his temples mixing with the tears. Cho waits a moment and looks to Tony to confirm if she should continue. The heart monitor chirps at an accelerated rate and Tony really does want them to stop, but he has to respect Steve’s wishes. “Okay, let’s finish it off.”

The pain billows through Steve like wind expanding outward. He doesn’t even try to hide it anymore but he does try and muffle his own sobs. Tony tells him to cry, he’s allowed, lord is he allowed. Steve only curls his face into Tony’s palm and tries to find what comfort he can. Leaning down again, Tony kisses him and promises to stay with him. 

Cho finally announces the procedure is over. “For now.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? For now?” 

Cho glares at him but answers, “Many times, burn patients must go through several rounds of debridement. I suspect Captain Rogers will not need that since the serum should close up the wounds fairly nicely and quickly.” 

Tony doesn’t comment but Steve pants as the nurses finish the final clean up. The monitor shows a rapid heartbeat and Tony rubs his thumb along Steve’s jaw as he cradles his face. “It’s okay. It looks really good. The serum’s going to close everything up and you’ll be good to go.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve says and he’s breathless with the pain. 

“You know I’m gonna be there for you, all the way, right?” 

Steve blinks his eyes several times and then settles on Tony. “I need, I need-.”

Searching Steve’s face, Tony asks, “What? What is it, sweetheart.”

“I just need to know, you’re there. It’s hard sometimes. I try to keep it in, but I can’t. Not always. Sometimes, sometimes, it’s hard to always get up and keep fighting. And doing it alone.”

“Oh,” Tony says and his heart aches as he touches his forehead to Steve’s. “I am never letting go. Nothing is ever going to do that again, okay?”

Steve presses his lips together and closes his eyes as tears leak out. “Okay.”

In the end Tony does sneak in some of the Asgardian mead. He feeds it to Steve so he can rest and Steve only asks for Tony to stay with him. They move Steve back to his room and Tony takes his place beside him, knowing it’s the right place, knowing he can never leave Steve. He’s a fool to even think it would ever happen. So he sits and watches and it feels right. For the first time, he feels as if he can sit and be present and quiet and not need to tinker and plan or anything. He’s found his place and it is a comfort to him. 

It takes Natasha standing in the doorway to Steve’s room, her arms crossed, and a few comments regarding needing a little more smarts than she possesses to yank him out of his vigil. When he jerks to attention, she smiles and strolls into the room. Steve has been sleeping, peacefully for a full ten hours. 

“He looks good, better I mean,” she says as she stops near the foot of the bed.

“I think his color’s come back, but I can’t tell if I’m fooling myself,” Tony replies and stands up to stretch. He doesn’t think he’s moved in all of those ten hours.

“When’s the last time you ate or slept yourself?” Natasha raises a brow at him. Scratching at his unkempt beard, Tony only screws up his mouth and shrugs. She shakes her head. “Come on, let’s get a sandwich or something.”

“Not tuna, damn not tuna.”

She seems surprised that he agrees to join her. “I promise no tuna. Come, let’s go.” Reaching out to him, she waits until he links arms with her and then she guides them out of Steve’s hospital room. They end up in the kitchen of the Avengers’ facility. Vision and Wanda are there and they’re busy putting together a meal. 

He watches them from a distance, separating himself and hanging toward the outside of the dining area. Natasha enters the kitchen and rummages through the refrigerator before she comes back and draws him toward the lounge instead of the kitchen table. “Come on.”

He appreciates it, he really does, but at the same time he’s mildly curious about the scene in the kitchen area with Wanda and Vision making some kind of cultural dish from her native Sokovia. When Natasha settles down across from him with two big mugs of coffee on a tray with sandwiches (thankfully not tuna fish but some turkey and cheese thing), he points to the odd couple and says, “When did that happen?”

Natasha looks behind at them and then turns around to smile at him. “Oh you know, lost child from a country that doesn’t exist anymore finds true love with a man who’s really not a man but an android or something like that.” She shrugs. “I don’t know it’s kind of sweet.” He reaches for the coffee only to have her slap his hand. “Food first.”

He grumbles but relents. After he chews down a good number of bites of the sandwich, he says, “It’s weird, you know it’s weird.”

“The sandwich or them?”

She’s playing with him and he’s okay with that. “Them. It’s weird.”

She picks up the overlarge mug and reclines into the cushions of the lounge. “It’s cute and they have more in common than you think. Plus you and Steve are weird, too.”

He swallows and frowns at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Like he’s all straight and narrow and you’re a playboy as you put it.”

He laughs. “Well Steve is not straight, I thought you knew that.”

She joins him and chuckles. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do,” Tony says and dusts the crumbs off of his hands. He grabs the coffee before she can protest and relaxes as he drinks it in, the warmth on his hands, the smell, the taste. “We’re good for one another, really good.”

“Yeah, you are, but why don’t you tell him that?” Natasha says and then acts like an innocent, like she didn’t just drop a nuclear bomb on Tony’s head.

“What did you say?”

“Listen, I know when Steve’s troubled,” Natasha says and places her coffee back on the table between them. “We’ve been close since the whole Hydra SHIELD thing. He doesn’t have to tell me when he’s bothered or hurting.”

“Of course he’s hurting, did you not hear what I said they did to him?”

“Yeah, I heard, but I don’t think you did,” Natasha says.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Tony snaps. 

“I see it, you’re keeping yourself closed off,” Natasha returns as she tears apart her sandwich and only eats a small corner of it. “You don’t want to get too attached because you’re afraid.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You do and you know I’m right.” She throws the rest of the sandwich back onto the plate. “We have some data files we need you to take a look at. We need you to confirm some of the information so we can track down the alien.”

“Okay,” Tony says. “I guess.” It turns his stomach and the coffee tastes like acid on his tongue. He gags a little and places the cup down onto the table. 

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want to,” Natasha says.

“No, no, I will,” Tony says. It will take his mind off of other things, things that Natasha has pried into as if she has an awl and likes to dig around in his brain. He stands up and claps his hands. From across the room, Wanda jumps and Vision puts a hand on her shoulder in a tender gesture. That is so weird. He blinks the thoughts away and says to Natasha, “Ready?”

“What? Now?”

“No time like the present,” Tony says, plus he’d like to forget everything else she just said. Maybe it rings too close to the truth. Natasha doesn’t argue just follows him to the main laboratory of the facility. It’s strikingly easy to run the data she wants him to scan and analyze. It happens to be data collected on the partial plate on the vehicle with the dubious alien. With shift efficiency he’s able to access the street cameras, different surveillance equipment, and his own satellites to gather the data to trace the suspect.

As he taps the screen hanging over the console and bench, he eyes Natasha – somehow she’s gotten a milkshake and she’s noisily sipping it while she rotates on a stool – very unlike her. She’s smarter than anyone really gives her credit. 

“Thanks,” he says as he finishes off the last of the scanning protocols.

“For what?” She chews on the straw.

“You know what,” he says, and then he rotates the screen to show her the information. “Let’s boogie because we have a date.”

Glaring at him, she puts the milkshake down and jumps up off of the stool. “You found him already.”

“Anyone could have with the right program and tools.”

“And so anyone couldn’t have,” Natasha says and then places a hand at her ear. “We have a location. Meet on the roof in 5. Bring Falcon, War Machine, and Hawkeye.” She turns to Tony. “Iron Man?”

“Let’s rock,” he says.

It’s over in short order, faster than Tony would have guessed and he should be happy about it. The gang of misfits really don’t put up much of a fight when the Avengers confront them in a relatively secluded compound that looks suspiciously like parts of the town Tony experienced during his imprisonment. It jolts him, causes him some delayed reactions, so much so that Hawkeye has to step in and fling a few arrows at an approaching horde of Hydra agents. 

The place is a ghost town – apparently set up to be used as a prop for the mutual fake life that Tony and Steve experienced. He doesn’t know why they needed a real town but without any people. He tries to keep his head in the game. Jocasta sounds the alarm, telling him that he’s out of sorts and not paying attention to the battle around him. He wants to deny it, but it’s the truth. Every little part of the compound eerily brings back memories of his time spent in the hell of his own mind. How did they do it? Why did they do it? 

As they surround the compound and Tony takes up the flank Jocasta reminds him to keep alert. He knows the AI realizes that he’s drifting, because the whole place is playing games with his head. He’s sure the AI warns Rhodey. Taking out Hydra and getting the alien under control is remarkably easy but Tony still stumbles and nearly takes himself out. Natasha and Rhodey don’t chastise him on the spot, but he can tell it’s coming. 

Sam and Rhodey get the alien but he must have had some kind of suicide drug or something because he drops to the ground and is dead before they can do anything about it. Tony doesn’t regret it, even though he knows it would have been better for them to take the monster alive to find out what his play was, what his end game could have been. 

It doesn’t matter to Tony because he knows it already and he looks up in the sky after they get back to the Avengers facility and he sheds his armor. The night sky feels like a veil between the safety of the day and the unseen horrors of space and time. The Tesseract might very well hold space as its power, and Tony saw it and experienced it. He knows something bad is coming and he wants that armor around the world, but he already tried that and it didn’t work. There’s no safety net. There never was.

It’s then under the shelter of the stars that he comes to grips with the idea that his only safety, the one that he feels like a lifeline, a live wire, a pulse, is Steve. The cold hits him and he doesn’t care because somehow he’s alive and well through the cord, the tendril to Steve. He leaves the darkness behind and goes to Steve’s room.

Finding him awake is a blessing. Finding him smiling is a benediction. He walks straight into the room, ignoring all protocols. “You look good.”

“I feel better,” Steve says, though there’s still a sallowness about his eyes and a hollow ache in his expression.

“Did the debridement work well, then?” 

Steve twists his mouth into a grimace but nods. “Yeah, Doctor Cho is encouraged. It looks like the serum is finally doing its job the right way.”

Dragging the chair to the bed, Tony goes to sit down and catches a look from Steve that’s wistful and open. Before he plops down, he says, “Hey, what?”

Steve only shakes his head. 

“No, something’s wrong.”

“It isn’t. I just-.” Steve reaches out but his hands are still a mess. “Just wanted to-.” He doesn’t finish and Tony’s not sure how to lead him where he needs to go, so he lets the moment fall like a teardrop into a silent lake. 

“Did you eat?” Tony says after the moment lengthens and weighs them both down into that lake so that he feels like he’s drowning. When Steve only nods and doesn’t elaborate the mood stretches and pulls and doesn’t let them go.

How could this have happened? What happened? They were together, they were growing and beginning and now this – this awful, cruddy place. Inwardly, Tony curses because he doesn’t want to be in this now, he wants to be in the place there were at, in Central Park, together, hand in hand. 

“So, Doctor Cho is moving me out of the ICU tomorrow, I’m trying to convince her to let me go to my room.” Steve shrugs and looks everywhere but at Tony. “I think I can get along.” He holds up his gauze covered hands. “Even if I can’t feed myself, I can get along. I can get-.” He stops and swallows down his explanation. It dies.

But Tony cannot let this happen, even if he’s a coward and he’s letting Steve flail in the waters, drowning right before him. “I could help. You know, I could get you something to eat, help you out.”

This bolsters Steve and that smile returns. “Yeah, that would be nice. You could talk to Doctor Cho.”

“Sure, sure, I think that’s a great idea.” God, when did it get this awkward and terrible to talk to Steve – he knows exactly when. When Tony refused to say he loved Steve- and he does. He loves him heart and soul, but his mouth won’t open and Steve is pale and weak and crumbling. Maybe if Tony would just say it, it would save them all. He needs to wrestle whatever this is into submission. He has a choice that he needs to make and he’s not making it. He’s ignoring it. “Listen, I wanted to say-.”

“You don’t have to Tony, you’ve been great. Really.” Steve heaves out a sigh. “It’s good. I’m good. I just want to get out of the bed. It’s been too long and you know how it is.”

He doesn’t, not really, not from Steve’s point of view. He fakes it, pretends and then he’s able to steer the conversation – or lack thereof – into the direction of the weird alien with the shapeshifter qualities and what that means for Earth. They delve into Tony’s own insecurities and, for some reason that make him feel so much better. He gabbers on about his fears, about the monster, even a little about the nightmare fake life he was forced to live. They talk about the weird abandoned town and Steve tells him how it was fed into his head somehow and then he was forced to feed it to Tony. They stay clear of talking about anything that has to do with what Steve endured. Tony thinks it’s the way to go. Eventually, Steve drops off and sleeps. It might be the first time in a while that there’s no furrow of anguish on his brow as he slumbers. It shouldn’t, but it relieves Tony and he quietly leaves the room. 

Two days later Cho releases Steve with a promise from him that he won’t leave the premises, and that he’s on light activity. That means nothing more than walking from the bed to the bathroom, showering, possibly watching television. He’s not allowed to cook or clean or run or punch bags at this point, though Tony thinks that latter would be just about impossible. His hands still look a little like chopped meat. 

Tony dedicates himself to helping Steve and he might hover a little too much and over compensate as well. But he feels as if the distance between them grows with each action he tries to do to make things better. Tony gets more and more frantic and Steve gets quieter and more stoic as time goes on. As always with Steve, he tries to do too much and ignores his own need to just slow down and allow himself to heal. He pushes the envelope. Resting is not a word in Steve’s vocabulary and Tony should know because he’s got an allergy against it as well. 

It’s the middle of the afternoon when Tony ends up in the laboratory tinkering and distracting himself when Friday tells him, “Captain Rogers is no longer napping, boss.”

“What’s he doing?” Tony tries not to let the announcement ratchet up his concern.

“Captain Rogers is attempting to get dressed and seems distressed over his lack of progress.”

“Dressed?” Tony drops his welding torch and flings off the mask. He knew he shouldn’t have left Steve – but the man needs his rest and Tony is about to go insane with introspection. So, he heads up to the living quarters and straight to Steve’s suite of rooms that Tony has started to think of as ‘their’ rooms. When he marches into the bedroom he finds a very naked Steve, standing at the bureau, listing to the side, and staring at his still bandaged hands. “What the hell?”

Steve peers over his shoulder at Tony. His back sports long stripes of healing welts where he’d been whipped and beaten. His muscles work as he turns back and hangs his head. Tony sees the slightest tremor, because even with the serum Steve experiences pain. 

“I thought you were working,” Steve says but doesn’t face Tony.

“Friday said you were having some trouble.”

Steve gives a little mirthless laugh. “Sure, if that’s what we’re calling it now.”

Tony crosses the distance between them and now he can see the subtle damage to Steve’s chest. It’s there, even after nearly a week. That screams just how serious Steve’s beatings and burns were. Tony wants to wrap Steve in his arms because he looks – somehow – paradoxically smaller in the nude. Even with the mass of muscles and the breadth of his strength on display, he somehow radiates a fragility that terrifies Tony.

“Come on, let me help. You shouldn’t even-.”

“Please, not you too.” 

Tony reaches out and touches Steve’s shoulder, and when that gesture is accepted moves his hand to cup his neck. “Steve, you’ve been through so much. You have to let yourself heal.”

Steve doesn’t hold his gaze, but lowers his eyes, and looks around, lost and a little hopeless. “The serum will heal me. We know that. No need to make such a fuss.”

“Good lord, man, you were fucking tortured. For days while they probed your mind and tried to figure out your connection to the Tesseract.” When he states the last word, Steve physically flinches and Tony soothes him with the warmth of his hands. “You have to let more than your flesh heal.”

“You’re starting to sound like those therapists you’re always mocking,” Steve says with a light tug of a smile at the corner of his lips. 

“Well, they’re not wrong, you know.” He drags Steve close and, for the first time, their touch seems right and good and easy. He embraces Steve, holding him for long minutes as they sway back and forth. After, he says, “How about I get you into some PJs and then you rest and watch some movies. I’ll sit with you.”

“Okay.” Steve’s voice is very small, far away as if the rocking motion has put him into a trance. 

Tony combs his hand through Steve’s hair and then quietly brings him to the bed. “Sit. I’ll get your clothes.” Tony leaves Steve hovering near the bed and retrieves his boxer briefs and a set of his old man pajamas from the drawer. When he returns he doesn’t chide Steve for not listening – all he does is bend down and help him put on the boxer briefs. Steve uses Tony’s shoulder to brace himself and then slips on the clothes without word. Tony helps him with the pants and then the shirt, buttoning it as Steve stands there waiting. Tony can see the scars, the scars that will fade in a few days’ time and there will be no physical reminder of what Steve’s been through – nothing at all. 

“I’ll remember, you know,” Tony says and he doesn’t know why he even decides to say it.

Steve licks his lips as Tony finishes buttoning his shirt. He grasps Tony’s hands and says, “I wish you wouldn’t.”

Tony looks up into Steve’s eyes and there’s a universe there – places and times captured and lived that he will never understand or comprehend on an intimate level. It separates them and divides them but it also fortifies them. It makes them stronger. “I’m going to remember what you did for me.”

“You’d have done it for me,” Steve says. He doesn’t hold Tony’s gaze, instead he bows his head. “I don’t want to remember it.”

“I know,” Tony says and gently brings Steve over to the bed. “But what you did-.”

“I didn’t do successfully. I tried but I should have figured out a better way.” Steve’s shoulder hunch over and, somehow, he compacts himself into something smaller, something frail. It disturbs Tony because he’s never know Steve to give up on anything or surrender even the smallest point. 

Tony is a fixer, but he doesn’t know how to fix this as he stares at Steve’s bandaged hands. “How about hot chocolate?”

Steve furrows his brows as he perks up. “Hot chocolate? It’s August, Tony.”

“I don’t know, I like it. Who doesn’t like hot chocolate?”

“Okay?” Steve says.

Tony pats him on the shoulder and tells him to stay put – and he feels a little like he’s talking to a dog and should apologize but Steve shuffles up on the bed and reclines on a massive pile of pillows. Satisfied, Tony rushes off to the kitchen to figure out how to make hot chocolate. He might spend a little too much time trying to discover the best temperature at which hot chocolate tastes the best, but eventually he gets a good mug of it with lots of marshmallows (he’s not going to admit to anyone that Wanda might have helped). By the time he carries the tray back to the bedroom he’s also put together a lunch with Wanda’s help again. When he enters the room he half expected Steve to be sleeping, but he’s not – he’s very awkwardly trying to use a tablet. His injured hands and wrists defeat him.

“Hey,” Tony says as he slides the tray onto the nightstand. “What are you trying to do?”

Steve mutters under his breath but then says, “Learn a little more about the Tesseract?”

“Oh, well, you aren’t going to find out too much on the internet,” Tony says.

“Chris Nolan did a movie about it,” Steve says and manages to perch the tablet up to see the webpage on Nolan’s movie _Interstellar_. “Can we watch it?”

Tony’s a little befuddled with the request but complies. “Friday, bring up _Interstellar_ , will you?” He smiles. “We can have a little picnic.”

The large flat screen on the wall lights up as Friday begins the movie. 

During the movie, Steve remains hyper aware. He barely acknowledges it when Tony helps him eat or drink the hot chocolate. He’s still clumsy with his hands but the movie captures all of his concentration. There are several instances where Steve asks Friday to repeat a section of the movie, but by the end he looks exhausted and spent as if he just traveled millions of miles in space. 

“Well?” Tony asks. “Did it help you out?” 

Steve thins his lips and shakes his head. “No, it wasn’t anything like that at all.”

“I don’t- I don’t know what you mean?” Tony says and it’s coming – the moment of realization. He can feel it like he’s standing on a cliff and perceives the slightest of gust of wind that will push him off. 

“The Tesseract – being in it. It wasn’t like that. _Still_ isn’t.”

And he falls.

The world splits open and the avenues diverge. He sees all the roads, all the interconnectedness of an octachoron, a cubic prism. The cosmic cube with its warped space lays out before him and he can suddenly and horribly see all the pathways of the future. He’s never left it. He’s still there. 

The roads splinter and he sees the path he took – one where they are free and everything –everything happens as he predicted or lived or will live. Another juncture and he’s on a different path – one where he’s holding Steve, broken, battered, and bleeding in his arms. He’s dying in Tony’s embrace and there’s no way to save him as the galaxy of stars around them break away and they disintegrate with it. But then Tony comes upon another crossroads and finds his way to a road where Steve never left the ice, where Tony never went to Afghanistan. It’s a different life, a safer but more dangerous life at the same time. He grapples and tries to find his way back. But then Steve is there again in his arms, blood staining his lips, his eyes bleary with pain but saying again and again, “Was worth it, you’re safe.”

“No,” Tony finds himself saying even as he doesn’t know what to believe. “Don’t, don’t do this.” Why is he stuck in this dark place where only a dying Steve exists? He doesn’t want this future, he doesn’t want this present. He wants the other one – the one with hot chocolate and scones and a bed and a love. He doesn’t want this nightmare. 

Steve’s mutilated, burnt hand reaches up and cups Tony’s face. “It isn’t a nightmare with you.”

Tony cannot answer. The words clog his throat and he heaves in a choked breath. He cannot have this happen, not this way. He won’t accept it.

And the world falls again.

Until he’s sitting on the bed with Steve and the hot chocolate is cooling between them. Steve’s weary expression tells Tony more than he wants to know. “You know. You saw.”

Steve nods. “I see it all the time.”

“All the time?” Tony says and he’s not on a cliff anymore, he’s plummeting in a downward spiral into some macabre rabbit hole. “I don’t. Tell me.”

He touches Tony’s hand and as he does a stream of stardust follows the action. Around them the room fades and the galaxy with its stars and nebula and worlds and fire exist. “I don’t know how to explain it Tony. I just live with it.”

“I don’t know what you mean?” He feels the tears stream down his face because he knows that this precipice isn’t about knowledge but about something deeper and primal – something that aches in his psyche. 

Steve doesn’t smile. “When I took that plane down, I went down into a sea of stars. The world around me was the Tesseract.”

“But it dropped into the ocean.”

“I don’t know how to explain it. Part of me will always be trapped there, in the Tesseract.” 

Tony remembers witnessing the shadows of Steve and the Red Skull locked in some mythical battle on the planes of space and time. Even now as he sits in the room, the bedroom and not the room but the sea of stars, he can see them fighting, battling until the end of space and time. 

“And now?” Tony feels the terror edge closer to the surface. He’s stuck in that shop, in that weird town still. “Where are we now?”

“Right here,” Steve says and the bedroom solidifies around them in a million pixels and he feels dizzy from it. “I’m with you but always trapped there as well. I hoped the movie might - I know it sounds wrong – but give me some insight. Because now.” He watches Tony closely. “Now after what they did to us, you’re trapped with me. Two places, two times all the time.”

“No, that’s not right. This hasn’t repeated itself,” Tony says. 

Steve lays back on the pillows the exhaust evident around his eyes and the pinch of his lips. “It hasn’t and it won’t. We’re not trapped in that fake world anymore. We did escape, we’re safe. But we’re tainted by the Tesseract forever.”

The words ram into his head as surely as if they were spikes driven into his skull. “You’re telling me, you’re telling me that this –we’re not trapped in some computer program. But this is how we’ll live now. Forever. We’re trapped in a Tesseract?”

Steve sinks further into the pillows, his face ashen and gray. “I don’t know how it works. I only know that I’ve been here since the Red Skull battle on the Valkyrie.” 

“Jesus,” Tony says. “And now, me?”

“You were contaminated by it, too. I suppose through the big hole in space or by me,” Steve says and he looks desperate for sleep but he won’t give in until Tony’s okay. It couldn’t be real – it might not be real. He slides up against Steve and cannot decide what he’d rather be real. This or something else. That’s when Steve tells him more. “There aren’t infinite realities, Tony. You go down one path and other pathways close.”

“How did you get so smart about this?” Tony asks and the daylight leaves them and he shivers, wondering if he’s lost in the Tesseract for good.

“I’m not. I just learned.” He quakes under Tony’s hand. “I see the realities and I have to choose.” It makes sense, Steve has always been a master strategist. Of course, he would be if he can see the different realities and pathways at juncture points of decision in life.

“How?”

“Sometimes blindly, sometimes not,” Steve whispers and there are tears in his eyes. “Sometimes I can’t tell what’s going to happen; there are too many variables. But in the end, in the end I know what will happen.” The shadows merge with the light and Tony sees the combat between Steve and Red Skull. “In the end, I have to win.”

“Or what happens?” 

Steve chuckles. “I don’t know. I’m not a prophet. I’m a mouse imprisoned in the perfect trap.”

Tony doesn’t like it; he can’t like it. This takes a way part of his free will. It disturbs the balance of what should be and what shouldn’t be. He needs to get away, far away. Without a word, he climbs up out of bed and feels the cold almost immediately. He doesn’t turn when Steve calls out to him, but instead keeps walking. He doesn’t stop at the lounge or speak to any of the team members. He doesn’t even talk to Rhodey. Instead he keeps moving, keeps going. Is he looking for the end of time, or the edge of the world? He doesn’t know. He goes straight to his workshop and lets the armor encompass him. He flies.

He flies and flies and flies. He goes to the plant where they were held and confirms everything that happened. He goes to the place where they finally ended it all and captured the alien and everything is confirmed and real. He doesn’t stop, he never stops. He doesn’t listen to Jocasta or the calls from his team members. He lets the darkness of the sky devour him and he flies. 

Time becomes a mystery as he tests the limits of the suit and the limits of his endurance. He doesn’t care, what’s the point anyhow? He flies. And flies until he cannot anymore. He ends up on an empty beach in the south Pacific. The suit in disarray around him. He could still get home, but what is the point? What is home when reality is dismantled?

“Tony?” 

That’s Jocasta trying her best to piece Tony’s broken brain back together again, but that’s not going to happen. Pieces are missing. She persists. “Tony.”

“Yes, dear?” he says and he remembers how very clever he thought he was when he called the Jocasta suit instead of one driven by Friday. Was that clever at all, or just a device of this fated world he lives in. 

“You need to go home.”

“There isn’t any home.”

“Captain Rogers needs you.”

“Captain Rogers isn’t even real, and neither are you, or me for that matter.” He watches the waves hit the shore and thinks about periodicity and the madness that has overcome him. He cannot parse reality when everything about him is filled with shadows and probabilities. He’s the god damned cat in the box – Schrödinger’s cat. Is he alive or dead or somewhere in between?

“Tony, if you don’t come, you’ll miss saying good bye to him,” Jocasta’s words are soft and tender and make no damned sense at all.

“What does that even mean?”

“Captain Rogers fell into what Doctor Helen Cho can only say is some kind of comatose state. He is not responding to any stimuli and has begun to fail.”

Tony taps his ear piece again because he did not hear that right – there’s no way he heard that right. He’s standing on a damned beach in the middle of nowhere, feeling the heat of the sun on his back and Steve is failing? Steve is dying? How does that happen? He was healing; he was fine when Tony left. “How?”

“Doctor Helen Cho cannot say.”

Tachyons, trapped, Schrödinger’s cat. There’s a decision to be made. He’s alive or dead. He’s trapped in the world with the little shop and Steve is tortured or where Steve’s forever engaged in a mortal battle. One is life and one is death.

“Damn it,” he says and calls the suit to him. It wraps around him and he shoots into the sky. He tries not to think about being manipulated and whether or not any of this is real. Somehow he needs to accept this life as the one that is real, that he’s not going insane, that he’s free. 

There’s a choice to be made. The world around him isn’t what he made it, or is it? He feels that the world has become a strange place where the twilight shadows play in the full sunlight and he cannot define his place or anyone else’s place. If he cannot touch reality, then what is left? If the reality he’s left with becomes something he cannot stomach, then what does he want with it?

But it is all that he has.

Should he throw it away?

Is Steve’s demise his fault?

It hurts to even consider the possibility, but the fact remains they are both a part of the Tesseract, both inexplicably tied to its power. One way or another they are part of a power that defines reality. The 4th dimension of space within time itself. It scares him, but he focuses on getting to Steve and forgetting about the insanity. When he lands on the roof of the Avengers facility, Sam is already waiting for him. Tony supposes that Jocasta alerted him.

He’s piss-ant angry with his arms folded across his chest and hell marking his expression. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Around.”

“Well, that’s nice. I thought you fucking cared about him.”

“I do,” Tony says as the armor dismantles. 

“You left him,” Sam says. “He’s sick and we don’t know what the hell is going on. You might have checked in-.”

“I’m here now, aren’t I? Just drop it,” Tony says and he knows he has no right to act out but he’s got nothing to hang onto and he’s flailing about trying to figure out how to get out of the situation or reality or whatever he’s in.

“Just try not to be such a dick,” Sam says as they head into the building. Tony goes straight to the bedroom but Sam grabs his arm and directs him back toward the medical level. “He’s sick and not responding. We had to move him back to the ICU.”

“Damn,” Tony says. As they weave their way through the levels of the facility and he watches the staff – Tony wonders what they all think, if he should even care. When he walks into Steve’s room, though, all of his doubts drift away. Even as he steps close he can feel it now, the vibration of space. The junctures and splits. They’re vibrant and pulsing like a living thing. He presses a hand on Sam’s chest and states, “Get everyone out.”

For some reason, Sam doesn’t question him, but follows his orders. Tony inhales sharply as he studies Steve. There’s a tenuous thread in the room, a reality out of sync – that’s the only way Tony can describe it. So he forges forward and feels the thickness of the air change around him. The shadows merge with the light and he sees the battle before him. It’s become Steve’s singular purpose – the war between what could have been and what is. 

He’s standing in the middle of the shop again and there’s the calendar still on July, still on 1977. He feels the cold shift through the small cabin and then he’s standing to the side of the Valkyrie watching as Steve pushes the plane downward and all the world around them goes white. He’s holding Steve in his arms as he bleeds out and there’s only hope in his dying eyes. He’s spitting insults as Steve as he lays in a heap on the floor of a cold bunker, and Steve’s leading a tortured and wounded man away. He’s back on the nameless beach pretending he understands the profundity of life and reality when he doesn’t know a thing, he doesn’t know shit. There are choices before them – wide and open.

And then he sees Steve before him. 

Broken, bloodied, fighting an eternal battle as if he represents the forces of good against the forces of evil. In some ways it is true. He played a part. Over and again, he played the role of a shop keeper but also Steve’s hope. He sees Steve in his arms again, as a battered man about to die but with hope and salvation beautifying his worn features. 

Tony understands then – he gets it. The Tesseract is the salvation of them all. It represents every conduit to places that could be but may not be or actually are. He can step out of the room and Steve will be locked in combat with the Red Skull forever and trapped in his comatose body. Or he can welcome the lines of fate but not as a predestine thing, but as strings to pathways that represent choices and free will. He’s never been quite so sure about anything before in his life.

His choice sweeps away the shadows and the streams of stars around them fade into afterimages or dreams of yesterday. He steps to the bed and suddenly the world around them breaks. He’s in the bed again – in Steve’s room again – and they are cuddled against one another as Steve jerks awake. He’s hot and shivering against Tony.

“Shush,” Tony says and runs his hands through Steve’s hair.

“I thought you left,” Steve whispers and his voice sounds unused and thick with sleep.

“Not anymore. I’m here.” He doesn’t look out at the room; he focuses only on Steve. The place around them may be the universe or it might be a bedroom within the Avengers facility. Tony doesn’t know, but right now he wants to see Steve.

“It’s a prison,” Steve says and he searches Tony’s face for something. “The Tesseract.”

Tony knows it. He feels it like he feels the air in his chest. He can see all the damage it has wrought. He can look back and know the pain that Steve has suffered for them. It is like being some kind of savior but without the final act. “We can’t end the Tesseract.”

“No,” Steve says and closes his eyes. He laughs a little and it is a mixture of pain and hope. “I wanted to do what was right, I wanted to help.”

“You do.”

“And where did it get me?”

“Sometimes we give all that we got and it isn’t enough. That’s okay, too,” Tony says but he doesn’t know if that’s true or not. “You don’t have to do this alone. You don’t have to carry the whole weight of the world on your shoulders.”

“I can see things,” Steve says. He’s choosing his words carefully. “I can see different possibilities, with you, with the world. What will be, or could be. I shouldn’t but I look and see. We’re headed toward a break down, toward a shattering of belief and reality.”

Tony doesn’t know why but there are tears in his eyes as he listens to Steve. 

“I can’t stop it anymore. Not anymore. I tried, I really did. I didn’t want to fail.”

Tony kisses his eyes, his forehead, his cheeks and finally his lips. It is soft and gentle, a tender wish for tomorrows that may never come. “It’s okay to fail,” he finally says. “Sometimes it’s okay.”

Tony sees the multiple paths toward the future in Steve’s eyes and the world collides with the potentials and the possibilities again. 

“If I fail-.” He doesn’t finish.

“I’m here to hold you,” Tony says. He gives Steve the strength he needs to stop fighting, to stop battling, to accept what he cannot change or war against it anymore. “I love you.”

The pulse of the universe around him sparks one last time as the battle is lost and the battle is won all at once. The blast around them transforms the course of the universe. The memories of battles, of trauma, of torture, of aliens shapeshifting melt away. It’s over before it’s begun and Steve falls away from him like a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter. Tony screams as the world reconfigures. Because this is not what he bargained for, this is not what he wanted so he grabs onto the tendrils of space and time. He grasps them and sacrifices all of the other path ways for the one that keeps him with Steve. He holds on and lets all of the other choices fall away, crumpling like dried leaves in the wind. 

He shifts the tether of the Tesseract, deciding like a god which possibilities are acceptable and which are not. The universe is filled with possibilities and he’s chosen to see only a few, but now he sees them all and he rummages through them like cards in a deck. He tosses the ones away that are not to his liking and he keeps and builds upon the ones that construct a reality of his choice. This is wrong and horrible and he knows he shouldn’t do it, but he cannot live without Steve. Steve has not been free of the Red Skull for over 70 years. Somehow, someway in the background of their reality, Steve has always had to battle. For Tony it will not happen again. He strikes the bonds between the combatants, not knowing how he can do it, but unraveling the links with an ease that should terrify him.

He realizes though that it is not some magical power or some force that he holds – but it is choice. He’s chosen and therefore the other realities fall away like so many petals in the wind. Realities are what he decides to perceive. The other competing realities become nothing more than dust as he solidifies his choice. He chooses to free Steve. 

He’s heard of mystics of the Eastern philosophies who dabble in reality bending sciences. There are those who believe and say they can wield the power of possibilities. He wonders if that is what this is. 

The paradox of Schrödinger cat isn’t an equation or a question, but a choice. A choice between life and death. 

One is life and one is death.

There is no special magic here but a decision, a choice. He decides between the different layers of reality. He chooses. Like the pages of a book, time flips through his fingers and he experiences the potentials. He watches as if through a mirror the battle between good and evil, between hope and dread. He witnesses the moments when the Tesseract was unleashed aboard the Valkyrie but he does not intervene. He discovers the moments when Steve first realizes that he’s linked forever in some kind of heartless battle with a fiend from his past. Tony watches as Steve jolts awake from nightmare after nightmare, plagued by the Tesseract and the Red Skull. All through the years as an Avenger, Steve had been tormented but kept his secret battle to himself. Maybe he thought he was insane, or maybe he hoped it was just a nightmare, some kind of traumatic disorder. But it all comes apart when they are abducted and Tony is forever opened to the power of the Tesseract. He sees the whip split open Steve’s skin, he feels the pain arch through him and brand him. He understands that they tried to break Steve, but they never did. If they had broken him it would have shattered the world, the universe, would have splintered. He fought the good fight against the Schrödinger’s dilemma for years. The paradox of Schrödinger cat is upon them. The ramifications will haunt them for years, but he is not a brave man when it comes to his family. He only has one course it doesn’t matter what the choice may be. He has one truth, regardless. He must protect and love Steve.

One is life and one is death.

It is time to free him.

Tony makes the simple choice, the only choice. 

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Sorry for the liberties I took with the Tesseract....


End file.
